Expert: Joe McSorley - 1/17/2010

Question
QUESTION: Hi Joe,
I want to know, can Zen liberate abused people, depressed and suicidal people, people with deep trauma, people full of hatred, people full of desire, etc to settle their grudges and achieve enlightenment? Any cases in the past on zen masters liberating these people?
And what kind of people would take interest in pursuing Zen? Those people desperate to find solutions to daily life sufferings, or those who just want to discover the mystery of enlightenment?

ANSWER: Dear Choo,
  Anyone who is willing to undertake the task can transform his or her mind by deep self-inquiry.  You can call this Zen or meditation or whatever, it doesn’t matter, it’s all the same, asking ‘who is the self that is suffering, angry, etc.”  This is something that the individual most come to on his own and seek on his own.  You can’t bring someone to this by trying to convert them or convince them, they must come to this by their own accord. You might approach this cognitively originally but it must take root in you and take hold of you beyond thought.  This cannot be pursued just out of intellectual curiosity nor can it be imparted to you by a teacher.  It must resonate inside of you and drive you on.  Once a man approached the master Bankei who asked him to teach him Zen and Bankei replied, “ I will teach you when my eating satisfies your hunger, my sleeping rests your body and my drinking quenches your thirst”.  In other words, I can’t do anything for you, you must do it.
  Over the years there are many people who have come to Zen because of the pain they had witnessed, caused or experienced in their life.  They may be angry, depressed or sorrowful but they need to uncover the root of their problem or they may have wanted to make sense of it.  Life is suffering, why?  I know of soldiers who were driven after war to seek an answer to their suffering and the suffering of the world.  Some come due to personal suffering and others due to their observation of universal human suffering but in any case they came to it voluntarily.  They did not come to it to study Zen but to solve a problem.  I think the majority of people come to Zen simply to replace an existing religion or for some spiritual comfort but not really to solve a problem.  They want to build up their world view and reinforce it rather than to remove their world view and see it universally.   I do think it is those that are desperate that actually come to a deep realization for they are willing to give up their personal self to do so while others really just want to appease the ego self.  A monk friend of mine once commented that it seemed to him that those with strong egos, but realized the ego was the problem, tend to pursue Zen or self-inquiry, most deeply.
  If you truly come to a deep realization all anger, hatred and desire leave.  You are complete as you are without the need to seek for any fulfillment.  The personal viewpoint is obliterated and reconstructed without the myopic fears of the ego self.  Once, in my very ignorant youth, I commented to a Zen master that his nature was more pleasant than mine and therefore he did not have the cynical and skeptical personality that I had that impeded me from Zen.  When I said this he got a huge smile on his face and chuckled but said nothing.  He was the most pleasant and kind man I have ever known and I figured he was that way from birth.  Years later I was with another teacher and was looking through one of his books at his apartment. As I did so a picture fell out of the book.  It was taken in the late 1940’s and it was a group photo of many of the great teachers of the last century including Hisamatsu and D.T. Suzuki.  In front was a very angry scowling man. He was very nasty looking and unpleasant and I said to my teacher,’ who is this guy, he really looks mean.”  He told me it was the master I had always thought was so pleasant.  I couldn’t believe it.  That’s why he just smiled at me so heartily.  Clearly he had transformed thoroughly.  So, yes, the path of truth and self-inquiry can solve these problems but very few people are actually willing to do what it takes to do so.  People do not change their eating habits to be healthy and it is so much harder to change your mind.
   Zen is just a way of self-inquiry. Zen in and of itself has no substance or meaning and cannot be looked at as a thing.
         I hope this helps you.  Take care,
         Joe


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Joe,
How would a person who is in the middle of deep depression/anger/trauma/etc stop to ask "Who is the self to feel depressed/angry/...etc?" Common sense will tell this person will most probably vent out his depression/anger/...etc in a negative way rather than self-inquiry. How would a person stuck in a huge desert with days of no water and food be suddenly asking "Who is this self that feel thirsty?" And then suddenly (due to unknown reason) he realize his true self and then no longer feel thirsty and slowly let himself die from thirst.

Please advice.

ANSWER: Hi Choo,
  I did say at the bottom of my response that very few people will follow this path of self-inquiry so I do realize that it most likely will not happen.  It is not uncommon when people are faced with these extreme situations of life and death that they have some sort of epiphany or realization and perhaps a greater sense of self. Maybe not the Zen idea of it but it can be a life altering experience.  In general someone who is angry or depressed will not approach this idea but will be consumed by their emotional state, however, someone who has had previous exposure to this line of thinking may at that moment be driven deeper.  My teacher often stated that someone who is emotionally distraught by depression must alleviate that depression before they can concentrate on self –inquiry because the psychological pain would be too distracting from the path.  He was also clear to state that just relieving psychological issues will not result in any true awakening no matter how many of them you solve.
   I knew of a Zen student years ago who became deathly ill while living in a monastery in Japan.  He was brought before the master and he told him, “I am very sick”.  The master replied ,” Who is sick?” and this opened the student’s eye.  He did not become awakened but that moment changed him for the rest of his life.  He told me this story when he was 80 and how much it had transformed him.  I do not expect the common person to suddenly come to this but it does happen to some who have been exposed to it.  Decades ago I was in a store shopping when it was robbed.  I was only studying Zen for a few months then and really had no understanding of it at all.  The robber put his gun in my face and for some reason I was removed from the situation.  I had a sense that he could kill my aggregates but not me and I was not scared.  I walked away from it more perplexed than alarmed but it did have a lasting effect on me.
   The theoretical person in the desert who awakens while dying of thirst will still be thirsty and seek water; nature takes care of itself.  They will no longer be grounded to that form but it does not mean they will haphazardly discard it either.  The individual self as a realized expression of the universe is still aware of its needs.
         Take care,
         Joe


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: If a depressed person can't be helped by zen and must settle the depression on his own, then after settling his depression, why would he still need zen?

Your teacher said that just relieving psychological issues will not result in any true awakening no matter how many of them I solve. How come? What if the psychological issues that I have solved are the issues of depression, hatred, anger, prejudice, desire (be it money, power and/or sex), greed, ego, etc? Nevertheless, I agree there will still be no true awakening because who am "I" that awakened? But I guess it's so true that when the most pressing issue facing us is nothing more than a simple glass of water to quench our thirst, all the talks about attaining true self or not true self will simply be rubbish.

I am really looking forward to find a zen grandmaster someday in the future. Then I will go to him and pinch him super real hard and see for myself what his response will be. Will he keep silent like a mute? Or will he yell "Ouch, I'm hurt"? Then I will grab the opportunity to ask the every silly question of "Who is it that hurts?"

Answer
Dear Choo,
 It is according to the source of the depression whether on not Zen can help. If it is biochemically induced or a matter of a genetic anomaly it is unlikely that Zen will help it because the disease gets in the way of the path.  In terms of existential depression or anxiety Zen can resolve that issue.  Many people are on the Zen path because they are driven by their personal suffering which results in depression.  Psychologically speaking, solving individual problems does not solve the problem of being an individual.  The self that has anxiety cannot be repaired; its own nature is problematic.  You may resolve certain psychological issues but you will not solve the existential anxiety of being, that is; I am alive and will die.  We must inquire into who we are; can this self be added to or subtracted from?  What is it that was born and what is it that dies?  When is it that you came into existence? This self is not bound by thought or psychological issues but it remains removed from us somehow.  We know that we are but do not know who we are.  This is why all the fulfillment of desires does not fundamentally change us or add to us.  No matter how much money, power, sex or whatever, we still are not happy.  We are trying to appease a self that we don’t know.  This is why all satisfaction is temporary.  Our happiness can always be undone by the uncertainties of life.  This is why my teacher says that just dealing with psychological issues does not resolve it.
   I hope one day you do get to meet that master.  How will you recognize him if you do?
   Take care,
         Joe