The Way of Unlearning

It is a truism to say that in order to learn Zen you must unlearn. Indeed, Zen is not difficult at all once enough barriers are removed. Pure Mind, Buddha-nature, Bodhisattvas, Buddhas—they are all present for us if our mind is not obstructed. So the difficult part of Zen is, let’s say, learning to unlearn the belief that the world we perceive through our physical bodies is the real world.

While this present world seems irresistible for us—it is not the highest world. Nevertheless, so long as the veil of wrong learning is over us, obstructing our vision, there is no authentic road to truth—there is no clearing. There is only the changing (anitya), disturbance (duhkha), and the false self (an-atman). Some are so deluded who even believe these three marks of finite existence are the Buddha’s real teaching. But they are confusing his diagnosis of the disease with the cure.

Yes…it is a difficult matter to unlearn when we acknowledge just how hard-wired we are in delusion. How, for example, can we see what Zen master Rinzai saw if our brain is muddled with mundane views about the world? And what a huge mistake we make if we expect Zen to conform with our mundane beliefs. In so doing, we have made up our minds that we don’t wish to unlearn.

To reiterate, Zen is not that difficult if we make up our mind to unlearn. This may explain why children learn so quickly. They simply don’t have to unlearn very much. Unfortunately, what children off learn quickly from their parents—much of it—if they come to the gate of Zen as adults, will have to be unlearned. Indeed, in order to regain the spiritual eye we must learn in a new way—a way that is very unfamiliar. Still, this learning merely attempts to restore our spiritual faculties; trying not to reinforce our temporal vision.