William Bodri

Correcting Zen

The purpose of this book is to more firmly establish you in the sequence of stages for attaining enlightenment. It is written as if for Buddhist monks and nuns because it can be most useful to this audience, but it can help individuals in all spiritual traditions. By reading this information the members of other religions will be able to realize how their saints are becoming enlightened and this knowledge will help them profoundly in their own spiritual practices and traditions. When Shakyamuni Buddha first taught his students he emphasized the emptiness of our self and phenomena. He clearly taught that all things lack an independent, intrinsic, self-so core nature because they are composite constructions defined by all other things. Therefore they do not inherently exist but only provisionally exist through filial relationships. His entire life he taught the principles of no-self, impermanence, dependent (conditional) arising, and suffering. These basic dharmas have already been sufficiently transmitted to society because now even modern science accepts them. At the end of his life, Shakyamuni surprisingly flipped his teachings because in the Nirvana Sutra he then spoke of True Self, permanence, purity and bliss. Those teachings seemed to be the opposite of his previous lessons on selflessness, impermanence, impurity and suffering but there was a reason for this new approach. The lessons within this book are a form of skillful means because they stipulate the importance of physical cultivation practices rather than just mental cultivation such as meditation practice. During his lifetime, Shakyamuni Buddha emphasized that we must purify our consciousness to achieve the spiritual attainments of dhyana, which are specific stages of Arhatship or Arhat attainment. He rarely emphasized the physical aspects of the stages of spiritual attainment nor that we should engage in acts of service to society to help eliminate the conditions of suffering around us that people commonly experience in life. Nevertheless, "beautifying society" is also a form of physical purification that essentially stands behind the motivations of the Mahayana and Esoteric Buddhist traditions. Because ethics and social morality have advanced since his day and the level of public education and understanding has also advanced, it is beneficial that the dual emphasis on mind and body (mind-body) purification should now be returned to Buddhist practice. In other words, there should be more emphasis placed on body cultivation and inner energy work since this is necessary for enlightenment. In this book you will therefore find an emphasis on these neglected topics in order to correct many of the current deficiencies in Buddhist practice, especially within the Zen tradition, and thus help more individuals attain enlightenment and much more quickly.