Buddhism Is Not What You Think: Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs

by Steve Hagen

Overview

“[Hagan’s] book will appeal to readers interested in what true Zen practice is supposed to be about beyond all the popular images and colorful stories.”

—Robert M. Pirsig, New York Times bestselling author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

 

Buddhism is Not What You Think is a clear, direct, and engaging guide to the most essential elements of spiritual inquiry: attention, intention, honesty with oneself, compassion, and the desire to awaken. A renowned Zen teacher, Steve Hagen offers a valuable hands-on guidebook in which examples from everyday life are presented alongside stories from Buddhist teachers past and present to banish misconceptions and inspire the newcomer and the knowledgeable practitioner alike. Buddhism is Not What You Think—it is both more…and less.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060730574
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/29/2009
Edition description:	1st HarperCollins Paperback Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.61(d)

About the Author

Steve Hagen is a Zen priest, a longtime teacher of Buddhism, and the author of the bestselling Buddhism Plain and Simple and Buddhism Is Not What You Think. Hagen began studying Buddhism in 1967. In 1975 he became a student of Dainin Katagiri Roshi, and in 1979 he was ordained a Zen priest. Steve lives in Minneapolis, where he lectures, teaches meditation, and writes. He is currently head teacher at Dharma Field Meditation and Learning Center in Minneapolis.

Read an Excerpt

Buddhism Is Not What You Think
Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs

Chapter One

Paradox and Confusion

If you visit a Buddhist temple in Japan, you'll likely encounter two gigantic, fierce, demonlike figures standing at either side of the entrance. These are called the guardians of Truth, and their names are Paradox and Confusion.

When I first encountered these figures, it had never occurred to me that Truth had guards -- or, indeed, that it needed guarding. But if the notion had arisen in my mind, I suspect I would have pictured very pleasing, angelic figures.

Why were these creatures so terrifying and menacing? And why were the guardians of Truth represented rather than Truth itself?

Gradually, I began to see the implication. There can be no image of Truth. Truth can't be captured in an image or a phrase or a word. It can't be laid out in a theory, a diagram, or a book. Whatever notions we might have about Truth are incapable of bringing us to it. Thus, in trying to take hold of Truth, we naturally encounter paradox and confusion.

It works like this: though we experience Reality directly, we ignore it. Instead, we try to explain it or take hold of it through ideas, models, beliefs, and stories. But precisely because these things aren't Reality, our explanations naturally never match actual experience. In the disjoint between Reality and our explanations of it, paradox and confusion naturally arise.

Furthermore, any accurate statement we would make about Truth must contain within itself its own demise. Thus such a statement inevitably will appear paradoxical and contradictory. In other words, statements about Truth and Reality are not like ordinary statements.

Usually we make a statement to single something out, to pin something down and make it unambiguous. Not so if our business is Truth. In this case we must be willing to encounter, rather than try to evade, paradox and confusion.

Our problem with paradox and confusion is that we insist on putting our direct experience into a conceptual box. We try to encapsulate our experience in frozen, changeless form: "this means that."

Ordinary statements don't permit paradox. Rather, they try to pin down their subjects and make them appear as real and solid as possible. Ordinary statements are presented in the spirit of "This is the Truth; believe it." Then we 're handed something, often in the form of a book or a pamphlet.

But all statements that present themselves in this way -- whether they're about politics, morality, economics, psychology, religion, science, philosophy, mathematics, or auto mechanics -- are just ordinary stuff. They're not Truth; they're merely the attempt to preserve what necessarily passes away.

When we claim to describe what's Really going on by our words, no matter how beautiful, such words are already in error. Truth simply can't be represented.

We want Truth badly. We want to hold it tightly in our hand. We want to give it to others in a word or a phrase. We want something we can jot down. Something we can impress upon others -- and impress others with.

We act as though Truth were something we could stuff in our pockets, something we could take out every once in a while to show people, saying, "Here, this is it!" We forget that they will show us their slips of paper, with other ostensible Truths written upon them.

But Truth is not like this. Indeed, how could it be?

We need only see that it's beyond the spin of paradox that Truth and Reality are glimpsed. If we would simply not try to pin Reality down, confusion would no longer turn us away.

What we can do is carefully attend to what's actually going on around us -- and notice that our formulated beliefs, concepts, and stories never fully explain what's going on.

Our eyes must remain open long enough that we may be suddenly overwhelmed by a new experience -- a new awareness -- that shatters our habitual thought and our old familiar stories.

We can free ourselves from paradox and confusion only when we set ourselves in an open and inquiring frame of mind while ever on guard that we do not insist upon some particular belief, no matter how seemingly well justified.

If it 's Truth we're after, we 'll find that we cannot start with any assumptions or concepts whatsoever. Instead, we must approach the world with bare, naked attention, seeing it without any mental bias -- without concepts, beliefs, preconceptions, presumptions, or expectations.

Doing this is the subject of this book.

Buddhism Is Not What You Think
Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs. Copyright © by Steve Hagen. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

What People are Saying About This

Robert M. Pirsig

“Hagen (Buddhism Plain and Simple) here presents 43 short chapters dealing with various aspects of Buddhist practice in a way that cuts to the heart of the matter. Hagen reminds us that whenever we’re grasping, aspiring, analyzing, judging, or in any way adding to the simple experience of the present moment, we are missing the point. The book will appeal to readers interested in what true Zen practice is supposed to be about beyond all the popular images and colorful stories. For practitioners it is also a book that will reward multiple readings over time.”

Editorial Reviews

This is not just another nice book about Buddhism, one telling us what we like to hear and are used to hearing. No—it is a clear and challenging showing of the fundamental truth of our lives. This is an exceptional book. Make good use of it.” — Charlotte Joko Beck author of Everyday Zen

“Hagen (Buddhism Plain and Simple) here presents 43 short chapters dealing with various aspects of Buddhist practice in a way that cuts to the heart of the matter. Hagen reminds us that whenever we’re grasping, aspiring, analyzing, judging, or in any way adding to the simple experience of the present moment, we are missing the point. The book will appeal to readers interested in what true Zen practice is supposed to be about beyond all the popular images and colorful stories. For practitioners it is also a book that will reward multiple readings over time.” — Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

From the Publisher

Hagen (Buddhism Plain and Simple) here presents 43 short chapters dealing with various aspects of Buddhist practice in a way that cuts to the heart of the matter. Hagen reminds us that whenever we’re grasping, aspiring, analyzing, judging, or in any way adding to the simple experience of the present moment, we are missing the point. The book will appeal to readers interested in what true Zen practice is supposed to be about beyond all the popular images and colorful stories. For practitioners it is also a book that will reward multiple readings over time.

Robert M. Pirsig

This is not just another nice book about Buddhism, one telling us what we like to hear and are used to hearing. No—it is a clear and challenging showing of the fundamental truth of our lives. This is an exceptional book. Make good use of it.

Charlotte Joko Beck author of Everyday Zen

"This is not just another nice book about Buddhism, one telling us what we like to hear and are used to hearing. No—it is a clear and challenging showing of the fundamental truth of our lives. This is an exceptional book. Make good use of it."

author of Everyday Zen - Charlotte Joko Beck

Hagen (Buddhism Plain and Simple) here presents 43 short chapters dealing with various aspects of Buddhist practice in a way that cuts to the heart of the matter. Hagen reminds us that whenever we’re grasping, aspiring, analyzing, judging, or in any way adding to the simple experience of the present moment, we are missing the point. The book will appeal to readers interested in what true Zen practice is supposed to be about beyond all the popular images and colorful stories. For practitioners it is also a book that will reward multiple readings over time.” %COMM_CONTRIB%Robert M. Pirsig

Zen Buddhist priest and longtime teacher Hagen makes his central point emphatically and repeatedly throughout this book: Buddhism is about direct experience, not about the thoughts people habitually entertain about experience. A student of Japanese Zen master Dainin Katagiri authorized by his master to teach, Hagen cites the Buddha's one-word summary of the goal of Buddhist teachings: awareness-awareness of whatever is taking place in the ever-changing present moment. Hagen's Buddhism is oriented toward big questions, strongly ontological and epistemological, and concerned with reality and how reality is ordinarily perceived (or, as he argues, habitually misperceived, because it is overlain with hopes, desires, concepts and other delusions). So the author is not given to a lot of specific examples or stories from present life, though the book is peppered with the ancient-master stories that Zen teachers always draw on. The tone of the book is strongly didactic and abstract. Unlike Zen writers given to simplicity or poetry or startling paradox, Hagen relies on typographical conventions-italics and capital letters-to articulate and underscore his central point about Buddhist awareness ("to see Reality"), which contributes to a ponderous tone. His Zen exegesis of Emily Dickinson is provocative, and the book would have benefited from more such surprises and re-readings of the lessons of everyday experience. That Hagen isn't a poet of prose doesn't detract from the worth of his content, but it does make his book harder to read. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Zen teacher at the Dharma Field Meditation and Learning Center in Minneapolis, Hagen (Buddhism Plain and Simple) here presents 43 short chapters dealing with various aspects of Buddhist practice in a way that cuts to the heart of the matter. In the prolog we're told that this is "not a feel-good self-improvement book about how to become more spiritual," and indeed it is not. The double-edged title sets the tone, and throughout Hagen reminds us that whenever we're grasping, aspiring, analyzing, judging, or in any way adding to the simple experience of the present moment, we are missing the point. In fact, he'd be likely to say that even thinking there's a point to be missed misses the point. The book is clearly based in Hagen's own experience of Soto Zen and will appeal to readers interested in what true Zen practice is supposed to be about beyond all of the popular images and colorful stories. For practitioners it is also a book that will reward multiple readings over time. Recommended for any library with an interest in Eastern thought and modern Buddhist practice.-Mark Woodhouse, Elmira Coll. Lib., NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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