Experience Based Spirituality

The great Way has no gate but a thousand different roads. If you pass through once, You will walk independently in the universe.

“Japanese mothers used to try to curb their children’s mischief by saying, “If you aren’t good, a spook will get you,” or “a child snatcher will come for you.” I remember being scolded like that myself as a child. Spirituality based on faith follows a similar model of trying to guide people using certain images and ideas. On the other hand, spirituality based on experience leads people to peace by having them perceive reality clearly, thereby ridding them of fear:

Wither’d pampas grass — that was all it really was, the ghost that I saw.

• Religious life can be classified into five phases: belief, understanding, practice, realization, and actualization.
• Following this division we may describe faith-based spirituality as grounded in belief and understanding, whereas experience-based spirituality emphasizes practice, realization, and actualization.

The word “practice” here means to discipline oneself, “realization” to attain enlightenment, and “actualization” to turn realization into one’s daily life. In Zen terms, it means that we personalize our enlightenment and actualize it in every moment of our ordinary lives.

Zen Buddhism is at the forefront of experience-based religions. I often say that Zen is not a religion. But if salvation is considered the task of religion, it is. However, unlike faith-based religions, Zen rejects concepts and beliefs as a means of knowing the truth. Instead it aims to help us perceive reality and to find peace of mind based on that reality. Reality is what we really are: namely, our True Self. When we discover what we are, we experience peace of mind and continue to live day by day in infinite tranquility and complete satisfaction. What more do we need?

It seems to me that there are a growing number of people in the world without a religion. Renunciation of religion is a phenomenon that occurs in the course of the transition from faith-based to experience-based religion. No longer able to believe in old concepts, people believe that the objective world alone is the real world and natural science the only means of pursuing truth. Materialism is perhaps the culmination of such thought. But materialism is a fallacy arising out of ignorance about the reality of our true human nature.

People come to believe that nothing exists beyond what the world of science is able to investigate; they don’t even consider the possibility of investigating or experiencing the true essence of their own nature and finding great peace of mind through that investigation. Because Zen insists on understanding reality through experience rather than faith, and offers a means of knowing the reality of who we are, it can facilitate the full transition to experience-based spirituality. I am especially grateful for the concrete and systematic nature of Zen training…

Without awakening (satori) there is no Zen. I am not alone in feeling this. My teacher Yasutani Haku’un Roshi also thought so, as did his teacher and my grandfather in Dharma, Harada Dai’un Roshi. In fact, Dōgen Zenji, Hakuin Zenji, and all the Zen masters and Zen ancestors throughout the history of Buddhism have known this fact. Since this is the case, we must ask what awakening is and how people become enlightened.”

~ Yamada Koun, Zen: The Authentic Gate