Finding Ikhlas in Japan

Notes on Buddhism, Zen, and the Struggle for Truth

Scenes of Heaven and Hell by Kuniyoshi from the 1830s

Last year, I finally got the chance to visit Japan. There are many things I can share about my time there, but what truly set it apart — and what moved me to write this little blog post — is a particular quality I found in abundance.

Here in the West, we might refer to it as “mindfulness.” A sterile term that I don’t think properly captures the spirit of the thing. And as I reflect on it some more, I don’t think we are capable of fully defining it. Because Japan refuses to conform to global sensibilities, and the Japanese insist on continuing to do things the “Japanese way.” This means travelers have to do a little homework before visiting. And visitors must be wary of assuming too much. In a world of increasingly converging tastes and interests, where it’s uncouth to “try-hard,” I found this authenticity refreshing. What’s more, I loved how it compelled me to engage in a little cultural anthropology, to reflect on how and why things are done differently.

Anyone who has spent time in Japan knows exactly what I mean. It’s evident from the first greeting you witness to the first trashcan you try to find. You can see it in the system of public transportation, and the help you receive if you find yourself, or your personal belongings, lost. Their very sense of national identity appears devoted to the communal good. They don’t litter, they don’t smoke in areas they’re not supposed to, and they certainly don’t jay-walk. No voices are raised in the subway, in coffee shops, or hardly in public at all. Train ride after train ride, I noted the comfort with which they sat in silence.

So as not to disturb them, I found myself mimicking their behavior: slowing down, not eating and walking, minding my every action. In doing so, it was hard not to reflect on the relationship between their culture and their material success. Why, for example, are arts, craft, and cuisine not native to Japan, often refined there? How does their faith play a role in their behavior? What attributes informed their miraculous post-war resurgence? During my relatively short visit, I had no way of thoughtfully answering these questions.

Partly because what little publicly available information existed in English seemed almost intentionally opaque. And partly because Japanese culture, religion, and national identity are complex and, at times, elusive. Their concept of faith and religion, in particular, baffled me: many Japanese identify as Buddhist, Shinto, and atheist all at once. A common refrain is that they are born Shinto and die Buddhist, and that none of this has anything to do with God. Go figure.

By the end of my trip, however, I think I was able to begin to grasp at least one aspect of Japanese culture. That is, I began to understand “mindfulness” to mean doing everything with utmost sincerity, or as we say in Arabic, “ikhlas.” Ikhlas in walking, ikhlas in eating, ikhlas in doing everything and nothing. They are the most sincere people I’ve ever met. And I’ve continued to reflect on that fact, trying to understand how it informed the things I saw there. But even this observation felt incomplete, like I was reversing cause and effect. I wanted to learn more.

So, after returning to the U.S., I began a little reading project. To gain some historical context, I read Ian Buruma’s “Inventing Japan,” and Christopher Harding’s “The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives.” Recognizing Buddhism’s profound effect on Japan, I then read Karen Armstrong’s biography of the Buddha, followed by two books on Zen Buddhism: Dr. Suzuki’s “Introduction to Buddhism” and Ngyogen Senzaki’s “Zen Flesh and Zen Bones.”

The discourse on Zen Buddhism and spiritual purification, in particular, resonated with me. And because I’ve always believed that spiritual realities manifest in material ways, it also made me lament the sad material state of many Muslim-majority countries whom I consider to have parallel doctrines of self-discipline. It wasn’t envy I felt, but a shared longing for mutual success, in every sense of the word. For the Japanese exhibited so many qualities I wished to also find in the places I called home — and myself.

In thinking through these issues, I’ve considered whether Japanese culture is a product of Zen Buddhism or the other way around. I obviously can’t resolve that question with any degree of confidence, and I won’t delude myself into thinking I have any expertise on this matter, however, I took some notes on my readings that I’d like to document below. I start by briefly tracing the history of the Buddha, then the main doctrinal splits that led to Zen Buddhism. I outline what I think I understand about Zen and conclude with a few reflections at the end.

All the quotes come from the books I cited above. Working through this forced me to reflect on my own practices and beliefs, of course. But most of those reflections are still brewing and perhaps I’ll write a separate post when they are a little more ripe.

This is mostly for personal use, but if you’ve read this far, perhaps you’ll find it useful too.

The Buddha

To understand Zen Buddhism — the primary school of Buddhism practiced in Japan — it’s helpful to first discuss Siddhartha Gautama, the man commonly known as the Buddha.

Born in India, Siddhartha lived a life of relative abundance but felt spiritually unfulfilled. Particularly with the fact that, despite our best efforts, life necessarily ended in agony (e.g., death). So one day, he left his family behind and “set forth” on a path to find the truth and break the cycle of suffering. He practiced yoga, embraced asceticism, and strictly followed the teachings of the traveling monks. Yet despite his best efforts, he was left wanting. None of these disciplines brought him peace. In fact, they only seemed to invite more suffering.

Then one day, after he rid himself of all worldly attachment, including the teachings of those who came before him, he attained enlightenment; he reached Nirvana and became an archetype for generations to come. To be clear, reaching Nirvana did not mean “personal extinction.” By most accounts, Siddhartha remained Siddhartha. But he had succeeded in extinguishing the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion, becoming the Buddha: “the enlightened one.”

After attaining Nirvana, the Buddha temporarily went into seclusion, until a divine being pleaded with him to “please preach the Dhamma…there are people with only a little desire left within them who are pinning for lack of this method, some of them will understand it.”

He responded, taking on the role of a traveling preacher. His mission was to offer a new way of being human, free from the prison of our desires. He believed it was possible to “train people to live without selfishness and to be happy.” Unlike in Islam, which teaches us to discipline our desires using our intellect, the Buddha preached the eradication of the self. Doing so allows us to recognize that desires, like hatred, greed, and attachment, are merely external impulses that we ought to reject.

Only by overcoming these desires can we embark on the path to enlightenment. Mindfulness helps us do that. Every day in meditation, Siddhartha “would deliberately evoke the emotion of love — that huge, expansive and immeasurable feeling that knows no hatred,” to eradicate these vices.

The Buddha’s preaching was not focused on theology; rather, on alleviating pain here on Earth.

Religious knowledge had one criterion for the Buddha: did it work? By vanquishing the ego and self, breaking free of our desires, and living for others, could we “confront human suffering head on, end all pain in this life, and find inner peace?” He wanted us to enter into and inhabit the type of peace and wholeness that, according to the Abrahamic religions, the first human beings had experienced in the garden of Eden. Said differently, Nirvana promised to allow humans to inhabit the kingdom of heaven here on Earth.

Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism

Centuries after Siddhartha’s death, his teachings split into two main schools of thought: Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism. I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of these traditions, but I’ll briefly outline what I think I understand. Maybe I’ll come back and revise this later.

Hinayana Buddhism appears to be more conservatively rooted in the original canon and teachings of the Buddha. It relies on the eightfold path to break the cycle of suffering humans are otherwise doomed to experience. It condemns idol worship, viewing Siddhartha as a common man who attained enlightenment, not a deity. Its followers accept only a specific set of sutras and interpret those teachings conservatively.

Mahayana Buddhism, in contrast, appears to regard the Buddha as a divine figure who was could assist his followers in attaining enlightenment. Despite the belief in the Buddha’s elevated stature, Mahayana places more emphasis on the teachings of his followers and is more flexible to interpretation. This tradition preaches that enlightenment is attainable to everyone and focuses less on the doctrine and more on the process of achieving enlightenment through meditation, the koans, and self discovery. It’s also a lineage-based tradition: while official sutras are important, an individual is primarily guided by a personal teacher who has a chain-of-apprenticeship dating back to the Buddha himself.

Zen Buddhism is considered a branch of Mahayana Buddhism.

Zen Buddhism

A little history

As its own distinct discipline, Zen Buddhism appears to have developed in China during the Tang Dynasty (7th–10th centuries) as “Chan Buddhism,” which was influenced by both Chinese Taoist philosophy and Indian Mahayana Buddhism (for those keeping track, this is around the time Islam developed in Arabia). The term “Chan” is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyana, meaning meditation, reflecting the practice’s emphasis on meditation and direct experience of enlightenment.

Zen spread to Japan around the 12th century, where it appears to have been influential in the development of Japanese culture. It was introduced primarily by Japanese monks who traveled to China and studied Chan Buddhism. One of the key figures in this transmission was the monk Eisai, who brought the Rinzai school of Zen to Japan in the late 12th century. Shortly after, another monk, Dogen, expanded on the Soto school of Zen during the early 13th century.

In brief, the Soto school teaches that enlightenment is not something to be gained or achieved through specific rituals or intellectual understanding, but is instead a natural part of the present moment. It asserts that satori (enlightenment) is already inherent in each individual, and the practice of zazen (sitting meditation) helps to reveal it — enlightenment appears in the process itself.

Whereas the Rinzai school is about experiencing a sudden moment of enlightenment through intense meditation and working with koans (see below). Instead of a gradual progress, Rinzai focuses on that “aha” moment where everything clicks, often with the guidance of a teacher. The idea is that through dedicated zazen and wrestling with koans, you can have a breakthrough that reveals your true nature and a deeper understanding of reality.

There are significant overlaps between these two schools of thoughts, and they are far less distinguishable than the split between Sunnis and Shias, for example, or even Mahayana and Hinayana, for that matter. But they do appear to emphasize different aspects of Zen Buddhism which is why I felt the need to highlight them here.

In the 20th century, Zen began to spread to the West, thanks in part to scholars like D.T. Suzuki, who translated and interpreted Zen teachings for Western audiences. I also think it might have served to fill a spiritual void that’s been present since the Europeans “killed God.” But that’s just my own pontification.

Anyway, Suzuki’s work introduced Zen concepts like mindfulness, meditation, and the importance of direct spiritual experience, and engaged with Western philosophical and post-Enlightenment figures on these topics. The bulk of the quotes below come from his book “Introduction to Buddhism.”

What is Zen?

Zen defies classification.

• It is said to be neither a religion nor a philosophy, as both these terms are understood in the West. It has no “set doctrines which are imposed on its followers for acceptance,” and is almost by definition, undefinable.
• Zen is “emphatically a matter of personal experience,” requiring us to grasp life in the midst of its flow; “to stop it for examination and analysis is to kill it; leaving its cold corpse to be embraced.”
• The truth of Zen lies in the simplest things of our everyday life. “How wondrously strange, and how miraculous this! I draw water, I carry fuel,” “a stick raised,” being “addressed by your name,” the “simplest incidents of life occurring every day and being passed without particular notice, and yet Zen is there.”

“The one thing needed is just to open one’s eye to the significance of it all.”

• “When conceptually understood, the lifting of a finger is one of the most ordinary incidents in everybody’s life. But when it is viewed from the Zen point of view it vibrates with divine meaning and creative vitality.” “In your drinking there may be no Zen, while mine is brim-full of it.”
• Truth is found internally. When your mind is “not dwelling on the dualism of good and evil, what is your original face before you were born?”

The goals of Zen

• Zen is the vehicle to satori (enlightenment). In the practical sense, Zen is the “methodical training of the mind in order to mature it to the state of satori, when all its secrets are revealed.”
• By achieving satori, an individual acquires happiness; peace of mind; insight into the nature of existence, self, God, and the world; “A new point of view, to look into the essence of things, the mysteries of life, and the secrets of nature.”
• Peace of mind. The individual who reaches satori obtains the rich unfoldment of contentment. If you have Zen in your life, you have “no fear, no doubt, no unnecessary craving, no extreme emotion.”
• In comparison to Islam, where peace of mind comes through reliance on God (tawakul ‘ala Allah), Zen seeks inner tranquility by mastering (eradicating) the self and overcoming attachment to external desires.

Zen can only be experienced

• “People often take the truths of a tradition on faith, accepting the testimony of other people, but find that the inner kernel of the religion, its luminous essence, remains elusive.” This reminds me of how Sufi scholars speak of the sweetness of faith that can only be tasted by those who purify their nafs (souls).
• Zen cannot be spoken of. Words only get us so far. “The human tongue is not an adequate organ for expressing the deepest truths of Zen.” “All that we can do in Zen in the way of instruction is to indicate, or to suggest, or to show the way so that one’s attention may be directed towards the goal.” We must become “masters of realities” such that “words have given up their dominion over us.”

“A finger is needed to point at the moon, but what a calamity it would be to mistake the finger for the moon.”

• Zen cannot be defined. “Zen has many meanings none of them entirely definable. If they can be defined they are not Zen.” “If one clings to what others have said and tries to understand Zen by explanation, he is like a dunce who thinks he can beat the moon with a pole or scratch an itching foot from the outside of a shoe. It will be impossible after all.”
• Zen cannot be taught. There are no “secondary experiences” in Zen; any attempt to “explain or analyze the contents of Zen with regard to enlightenment would be in vain.” “Zen abhors repetition or imitation of any kind, for it kills…For the same reason Zen never explains, but only affirms. Life in fact and no explanation is necessary or pertinent. To explain is to apologize, and why should we apologize for living? To live — is that not enough?
• Zen must come from personal experience. “Any answer is satisfactory if it flows out of one’s inner most being.” “Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only a borrowed plumage.” “Whatever teachings there are in Zen, they come out of one’s one mind. We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.” “Zen just feels fire warm and ice cold, because when it freezes, we shiver and welcome fire.” A master to his student: “I have nothing give you, and what truth of Buddhism do you desire to find in my monastery? There is nothing, absolutely nothing…Get enlightened by yourself, if you will. If there is anything to take hold of, take it by yourself.”

“if i say yes, you will think that you understand without understanding. if i say no, i would be contradicting a fact which many understand quite well.”

• Thus, to achieve Zen, is to be in a flow state; not looking for answers, but feeling them while doing good.

Methods of Zen

The following is what I consider to be the tools of self-purification employed by Zen to achieve satori — I know defining it like this is very self-contradictory, but alas.

Meditation (zazen / dhyana)

• “Attentive self-scrutiny has helped Buddhists monitor the distractions that deprive us of peace.”
• “Even the most mundane tasks can be a form of meditation when approached correctly.” When walking, walk. When eating, eat. Every waking moment of life is an opportunity for mediation.
• In Zen, the natural state is enlightened, “but we have diluted our nature by adding to it so many “-isms,” and that is why doing nothing in meditation brings us closer to our natural state.” Nirvana is hidden underneath it all.
• Zen Buddhists do not meditate on a fixed thought. Not on God, Buddha, or any particular scripture. “There is no object in Zen upon which to fix the thought … Upon what do the fowl mediate? Upon what do the fish in the water meditate? They fly; they swim. Is that not enough? By emptying the conscious mind, we allow the unconscious to seep through.”
• “Dhyana means to hold one’s thought collected, not to let thought wander away from its legitimate path…to bring the mind into the most favorable condition in which it will gradually rise above the turbulence of passions and sensualities.”
• In Zen, “dhyana or zazen is used as the means of reaching the solution of the koan. Zen does not make Dhyana an end in itself, for apart form the koan experience, the practicing of zazen is a secondary consideration.”

The Koan

• What are they: A koan is a story that one must mediate on to rattle the mind, to jolt an individual out of the regular way of thinking of things (e.g., the sound of one hand clapping, if u see the buddha on the street kill him). It is “neither riddle nor a witty remark. It has a most definite objective, the arousing of doubt and pushing it to its furthest limits.”
• How to approach the koan: “It is far better to allow oneself to become deeply imbued beforehand with the exotic obscurity of the Zen anecdotes,” where an apparently “insignificant event produces an effect which in import is altogether out of proportion.” “Throwing your entire being against the Koan unexpectedly opens up a hitherto unknown region of the mind.”

“The koan is only a piece of brick used to knock at the gate, an index-finger pointing at the moon.”

• Purpose of the koans: These “manifestly enigmatical presentations were designed to create in their disciples a state of mine which would more systematically open the way to enlightenment.” “The master intends to free his disciples’ minds from the bondage of logic…are you going to be eternally chained by your own laws of thought or are you going to be perfectly free in assertion of life which knows no beginning or end.”
• What’s the answer? “The koans, however, are of such great variety, such ambiguity, and above all of such overwhelming paradox, that even an expert is completely in the dark as to what may emerge as a suitable solution.”
• History of the koans: Koan’s are a necessary evil, a cheat code; enlightenment should be achievable without them, but the koan exercise had to be established for the benefit of the rising generations and also for the coming ones: “the induction of the system of koan into Zen, pure, natural, and elementary, is at once a deterioration and an improvement.” “After many years of meditation,” one “might succeed in mastering Zen; but such examples are rare in our modern days; we are so distracted with all kinds of business that we are unable to walk all by ourselves into the labyrinth passageway of Zen.”

Values of Zen

• Selflessness: To live morally is to live for others.
• Discipline: It’s about making rules for oneself and following them.
• Simplicity: “We ought not, however, to conclude that asceticism is an ideal of life for Zen monks…the central idea of the monk’s life is not to waste but to make the best possible use of things as they are given us.”
• Detachment: To rid ourself of desire, because it makes us discontented with our present circumstances. “The desire to possess is considered by Buddhism to be one of the worst passions with which mortals are apt to be obsessed. What, in fact, causes so much misery in the world is the universal impulse of acquisition.”
• Sincerity: “In the study of Zen, the power of an all-illuminating insight must go hand in hand with a deep sense of humility and meekness of heart.”
• Moral character: Zen requires us to live a life of refined moral character. To simply one’s life, restrain desires, and not waste a moment ideally.

Lifestyle changes

• “The spiritual conceptions necessary to Zen are missing in the West. Who amongst us would produce such implicit truth in a superior master and his incomprehensible ways?”
• We must do spiritual prep work before attempting to understand satori; it takes work; one must prep for the transformation (satori), by “letting go,” “going forth,” “extinguishing the ego.”
• “Unless, therefore, you devote some years of your earnest study to the understanding of its primary principles, it is not to be expected that you will begin to have a fair grasp of Zen.”

The limits of knowledge

• Accumulation of knowledge is not emphasized in Zen. Western spiritual enlightenment requires filling the cup. Zen requires emptying it to then fill it again. “All the conditions of satori are in the mind; they are merely waiting for the maturing.”
• Limits of logic: “In logic, there is a trace of effort and pain; logic is self-conscious…Zen abhors this. Life is an art, and like perfect art it should be self-forgetting; there ought not to be any trace of effort or painful feeling. Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived as a bird flies through the air or as a fish swims in the water. As soon as there are signs of elaboration, a man is doomed, he is no more a free being.”
• Intellectual and analytical comprehension are not of much use to understanding Zen: A master said to his student: “I really have nothing to impart to you, and if I tried to do so you might have occasion to make me an object of ridicule. Besides, whatever I can tell you is my own and can never be yours.”

Satori

• What is it: A (spiritual) transformation of the psyche that even if imagined, has real effects. “In Zen there must be satori; there must be a general mental upheaval which destroys the old accumulations of intellection and lays down the foundation for a new life; there must be the awakening of a new sense which will review the old things from a hitherto undreamed-of-angle of observation.”
• New way of seeing things: “It’s not that something different is seen, but that one sees differently.”

“Satori does not consist in producing a certain premeditated condition by intensely thinking of it. It is acquiring a new point of view for looking at things….it is the sudden flashing into conscious of a new truth hitherto undreamed of.”

• Outcome: “When we come out of satori we see the familiar world with all its multitudinous objects and ideas together with their logicalness, and pronounce them good.” “All your mental activities will not be working to a different key, which will be more satisfying, more peaceful, and fuller of joy than anything you have experienced before.”

Theology

• Divinity here on Earth, and from within. When people seek salvation in the Buddhist view, “they can expect no divine support.” Zen “most strongly and persistently insists on an inner spiritual experience…but as Buddhism does not recognize a supernatural agency in such matters, the Zen method of spiritual training is practical and systematic.” Practice “goodness” without any thought of recognition by others, even God.

“What was up in the heavens, Zen has brought down to earth. With the development of Zen, mysticism has ceased to be mystical…for Zen reveals itself in the most uninteresting and uneventful life of a plain man on the street…it makes us live in the world as if walking in the garden of Eden…and all those spiritual feats are accomplished without resorting to any doctrines but by simply asserting in the most direct way the truth that lies in our inner being.” (i.e., the Islamic concept of fitra)

• No second hand beliefs. “A person’s theology was a matter of total indifference to the Buddha. To accept a doctrine on someone else’s authority was, in his eyes, an unskillful state, which could not lead to enlightenment, because it was an abdication of personal responsibility.” “It is not that Zen wants to be morbidly unholy and godless, but that it recognizes the incompleteness of a mere name.”

“Copying is slavery…the letter must never be followed, only the spirit is to be grasped…Higher affirmations live in the spirit. And where is the spirit? Seek it in your everyday experience, and therein lies abundance of proof for all you need.”

• Inner spirituality. Zen “most strongly and persistently insists on an inner spiritual experience…but as Buddhism does not recognize a supernatural agency in such matters, the Zen method of spiritual training is practical and systematic.”
• On God: Zen is not Godless. But God must be experienced firsthand. We cannot believe other people’s accounts of God. “So long as we are fettered by the intellect, we cannot interview God as he is; we seek him everywhere, but he ever flies away from us.” “Zen has from the beginning made clear and insisted upon the main thesis, which is to see into the work of creation; the creator may be found busy molding his universe, or he may be absent from his workshop, but Zen goes on with its own work. It is not dependent upon the support of a creator; when it grasps the reason for living a life, it is satisfied.”

“Show me this face and you get into the mystery of Zen. Who are you before Abraham was born? When you have had a personal, intimate interview with this personage, you will better know who you are and who God is.

• Relationship with Buddhism: “Zen claims to be Buddhism, but all the Buddhist teaching as propounded in the sutras and sastras are treated by Zen as mere wastepaper whose utility consists in wiping off the dirt of intellect and nothing more.” “Zen says not to seek it (enlightenment) through the Buddha.”

A student asked his master: “Is it not a laudable thing to pay respect to Buddha?” The master replied: “Yes, but it is better to go without even a laudable thing.”

• Relationship with other religions: “A man may meditate on a religious or philosophical subject while disciplining himself in Zen, but that is only incidental; the essence of Zen is not there at all…getting into the real nature of one’s own mind or soul is the fundamental object of Zen Buddhism…the discipline of Zen consists in opening the mental eye in order to look into the very reason of existence.”

Closing Thoughts

I fully recognize the irony of me trying to logically process and understand Zen Buddhism through these notes. But this is how my mind works — if I am to be spiritually moved by something, I feel compelled to try to understand it first.

In doing so, I‘ve found it difficult to approach Zen with an empty cup. I can’t help but draw parallels to the Islamic tradition, much of which I find compatible with Zen. Though I recognize that some aspects of Zen appear to conflict with Islam’s mandate to submit to God, I wonder if it is our efforts to submit to God’s will — that is, each believer’s individual obligation to reflect, improve, and stand before God saying “I’ve tried” — that is most Zen. After all, what are Islam and Zen but paths of self-purification that we must each walk every day. I’m still thinking through it. Allah knows best.

On Zen itself, I struggle most with a certain presupposition that should come as no surprise (given my background): the rejection of external authority in favor of internal truth. I’m not trying to get too clever with it, but doesn’t this proposition itself rely on an external claim? From where do I gain the conviction that truth can be found internally? It may be the case that after a lifetime in search of the truth, it suddenly dawns on me, that our distinctions between the internal and the external, the -isms, the affirmations and denials, all converge. But if I am to walk that path, doesn’t it first require me to believe a thing I am told about the destination? To be sure, a belief that is not indigenous to our souls is not a a belief at all (Quran: 2–256). But how can I believe a thing I don’t even know? Ok, now I’m getting too fugaizi. I’ll leave it at that.

P.S. If I’ve misrepresented any of these doctrines or beliefs, please let me know. I welcome any thoughts and feedback.