96. People, God & Design Intent

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

Whose idea was this?

It certainly wasn’t mine —

Perhaps it is yours?

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The thread running through this series is the underlying connection, the various links, between Design thinking and Zen, and how they differ from conventional thinking and religion. In considering the topics of the times, such as the spate of school shootings and other mass murders recurring on a daily basis now, it may seem to be stretching this idea to its breaking point. But just consider: What part of these events is not the result of some design of human intent? And how is the design of the conventional response working, or not?

After all, the federal government of the United States of America, and the governing bodies of its now fifty states or commonwealths, their counties, parishes (Louisiana) and boroughs (Alaska), cities, and other subdivisions, consisting of the repeat triumvirate of executive, legislative and judicial branches, did not fall out of the sky, like commandments from heaven. It was the product of intense debate documented in the Federalist Papers, and is the subject of continuing conflict concerning the nature of the democracy or republic the powers that be want to see evolve in the future. How is that working out?

In Design, we say that you cannot design around human nature. You have to take it into account, warts and all. The design of the government of the USA was putatively intended to limit its powers to those that, if unlimited, would appeal to the worst instincts of human nature. In other words, government of the people, by the people and for the people, as honest Abe put it, is intended to govern, or control, the people themselves. Especially those in power. But we have seen this original design intent corrupted again and again, and by guess who? The people in power at the moment. And those in power have again and again attempted to establish dynasties, wherein they not only retain power for life, if possible, but also hand it down to their children in perpetuity, potentially, like some permanent potentate. As recently lavished upon the royal family, under the rubric of the queen’s “platinum jubilee,” with grand — some might say gross — pageantry, in what was formerly Great Britain. Or witnessed in the Trumpist claim to entitlement in the USA. Not to mention the long, sad history of nepotist despots in South America and around the world. There apparently is no limit to human hubris, given the financial means to indulge it.

In the face of the many absurdist reality shows on offer, in their disappointment and frustration, people naturally turn to sources of comfort and solace, such as religion or science. This is one of the main themes of my soon-to-drop second book, “The Razorblade of Zen,” positing Zen as a third alternative. But religion gets mixed up with politics, when we begin to see the local melodramas and misuses of governance in the light of a larger plan, namely a “divine plan” of God, who we imagine to be interested in, and intimately involved with, the now-continuous campaigns of mere mortals for earthly power. This generally turns out to be an ugly marriage, birthing many ugly babies. As a current example, some evangelistic sects are reportedly being torn apart by political and ideological conflicts insinuating themselves into the church as wedge issues stressing its fragile fellowship, and begging the question of God’s will. Likewise, when we hope for a silver bullet from science, we are often disappointed.

Here, in the dark interior of this particular Pandora’s box, is where one of the approaches routinely applied in Design thinking may shed some light, or at least raise the appropriate challenges to conventional thinking. We call this particular exercise, “What if?” What if there were no government? How would you govern yourself? What if there actually is no god, at least not of the kind we imagine. Which, truth be told, is inevitably a projection of our own self-nature. What else would you expect from a person, in conceiving the kind of intelligence behind the creation and design of this world? Something inhuman? And therefore having little or no regard for your fate? That would not do. No, God, capital “G,” must surely be like us, or rather, like me. And probably more like me than thee, come to think of it.

The concept of a personal God, like that of a personal soul, provides too ready an answer, too often a substitute for confronting inconvenient truths, just another foil for reinforcing our dubious self-identity. Matsuoka Roshi would often address the question of the existence and nature of God. He would say, “In Zen, who is Buddha? You are Buddha! In Zen, who is God? You are god!” He never claimed that he was God, or that he was Buddha. What could he possibly mean?

I think we have to ask, What is Buddha? Again — aside from the capitalization indicating the historical Buddha Shakyamuni — “buddha” essentially means “the awakened one.” That is, consciousness itself. If this seems too simple and inadequate, your interpretation does not address the implications of consciousness. Or we might say, the miracle of consciousness. Nobody, not from the scientific end of the spectrum, nor from the religious perspective, really understands this phenomenon. Buddha himself did not understand it. The bare fact of sentient being is not something that can be understood.

So if there is such a thing as God, it must have something to do with this consciousness we share with all sentient beings, to differing degrees, of course. Perhaps what Sensei meant is that the very consciousness that raises the question — Who is God? — is the answer to the question. The “sparrow quote” proclaims a belief in the omniscience and omnipresence of God, from the King James Bible:

Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without God knowing it. And the very hairs on our heads are all numbered. So don’t worry; we are more valuable to him than many sparrows. (Matthew 10:29-31)

The scientific question here would be “how,” as I suggest in my first book, “The Original Frontier.” How, exactly, does God register this relatively inconsequential event? Perhaps by dint of the sparrow’s consciousness — of its own death? Or that of its mate? By the thud of the carcass striking the ground, heard by the local coterie of sentient predators, who would regard it as a snack? Or perhaps the swarm of scavenger rodents and insects who strip the flesh from the bones of the corpse? All of the above?

In this analysis, “God” is all consciousness, mutual awareness of all sentient beings taken together. To a person who believes that there absolutely must be a separate “who” behind the “why” and “what” of existence, as well as the “how” — not to mention the “where and when” — it may seem self-evident that there is an “intelligent designer” behind what is arguably the intelligent design of the universe. But such a person, in order to discern the presence, must be ready and willing to consider the absence of God, as well. In other words, to take into consideration the possibility that there is no such God, as proof of concept. Otherwise, their God is an example of blind faith, a belief that is not seriously examined, but only adopted for convenience. If the reality of a benign overseer is to be proven out in one’s own experience, it must begin from a baseline of the absence of that presence. The only way to distinguish an object is to separate it from its ground. The inability to do so is a bit like an optical illusion.

So, what if there is no God? This would render our knee-jerk conventional resort to such aphorisms and euphemisms as “God’s will” and “God moves in mysterious ways” largely feckless, in the face of such horrors as the insanity of war and mass killings, at the hands of our fellow man. Or that the trigger-man is simply “evil,” which in this context is a religious statement. These simplistic pat answers are evasive maneuvers to avoid the question, actually. If there were no God, we would have to consider an alternative approach to the definition of the problem at hand. Which is the essence of Design thinking.

Assuming that there is no God on whom we can dump the blame, we have to move in a different direction toward a solution. This is a case of moving “what if” into the logic of “if, then.” If it is true that there is no God — remember, this is just a working premise, not an argument one way or the other — then we cannot turn to God, or our hopeful, self-centered characterizations of Him or Her to resolve our dilemma. We must turn to other sources. And what are those other sources? Usually, government. Back to the justice system and the powers-that-be. But if they are based on the same framework — “In God we trust” — then we are caught in a tautology, a forever self-fulfilling prophecy that can do no more than chase its own tail. “Our thoughts and prayers are with you.” How to break out of this cycle?

Or we can turn to Science, with a capital “S,” for solutions. The arc of technology certainly holds out some hope that the men and women in white coats are working day and night, feverishly examining new ways to feed the burgeoning populace, shield the earth from the glare of an increasingly angry sun, cleanse the air and waters of the accumulated pollution of the last couple of centuries of industrial exploitation of resources, and so on. Until you discover that most of the work is dedicated to sustaining the interests and incomes of the very corporate powers-that-be who, after all, finance the research. Including the government and its profiteering complex, no longer limited to the military-industrial bugaboo of Eisenhower’s farewell address.

The so-called “soft sciences,” including such disciplines as sociology and psychology, also seem to offer some corrective, but only palliative, options. More counseling, more mental health assistance, more concern and care. To be layered on top of existing teacher-student-parent, employer-worker-industry, doctor-patient-treatment, and husband-wife-children triangles — to name a few — that are apparently failing to produce intended outcomes, instead resulting in acts of blaming, revenge and violence.

As Pogo the Possum famously declared, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” As a young person I was a big Walt Kelly fan, as well as being influenced as a child-artist by Walt Disney’s prodigious output. Mad Magazine was a big one as well, later on. These were the social media of my formative years, mainly print, the movies, and the infancy of television. One of the issues that separates generations, making intergenerational collaboration even more difficult, is this cultural disconnect. The images and influences that fill in the background of the passing pageantry of life are also evolving, more rapidly than we are as biological beings. Cultural evolution more readily explains the domination of the human species over its fellow sentient beings, than any increase in fundamental intelligence. We are becoming more and more of a burden on the environment, but are not getting any smarter.

Master Dogen is said to have commented that in Zen, we are about the business of developing true intelligence. This implies that there must be a kind of intelligence that is false. One modern meaning of intelligence, in military and international spheres, is data-gathering. That this kind of intelligence can be false is all-too-painfully obvious in miscalculations and errors that have led governments and their military dogs of war into misadventures around the globe, with America as the poster boy, until Russia, under the benighted guidance of their current potentate, Vladimir Putin, invaded Ukraine. Again. But the kind of intelligence Dogen was pointing to was personal. Your intelligence or mine.

Intelligence and sentience, or consciousness, cannot be separated, whatever you may think of the IQ test. In zazen, by unlearning our erroneous views of our own direct experience through the senses, we develop the intelligence side of consciousness, in which perception and conception come more in line with reality as it is, outside our personal preferences. It is this kind of unsentimental, unbiased intelligence that we need to bring to bear on the ever-changing koan of everyday life that we are facing in these challenging times.

To be continued.

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Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to [e-mail]. Gassho.

Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell