Groundlessness

Zen Talk April 2024

In a previous talk, I ended by saying that compassion runs like a common thread through that rich array of traditions we call Buddhism. Another common thread is groundlessness. It is a recent term, that can refer to many Buddhist terms in different traditions, such as emptiness, selflessness, dependent arising, middle way, nonduality… . But while we encounter compassion in the smile of every Buddha, groundlessness may be less obvious at first glance.

An interesting illustration of this, I found in an article by David McMahan (link). Based on the Sutta on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (MN 10) he describes how “this sutta lays out an entire way of being in the world, filled with judgments of right and wrong, attitudes to take toward various phenomena, goals to be achieved, philosophical concepts to be mastered, emotions and intentions to be cultivated and others to be avoided.” He then analyses how this text was understood very differently in early India than in our modern world. He offers a well-documented and grounded analysis.

But then he adds a postscript where he confesses that “in the Large Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra, there is a version of the Sutta on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness … All models of the path we have discussed as essential to structuring the ways of being that meditators have tried to cultivate— are enumerated here, yet … are known through ‘non-apprehension’ (anupalabdha); that is, seeing them all as empty (śūnya) of inherent, independent, permanent existence … they are all conceptual constructs and have no inherent, independent reality.”

McMahan calls it an important doctrinal shift. To me, this sounds like the way it always was intended to be understood. It feels like someone giving a meticulous description of a bottle of wine and then, totally unexpectedly, discovering that it contains a liquid with a wonderful aroma. Maybe you can even taste it. But of course I am a Zen teacher and as McMahan says: “Some Zen literature takes this deconstructive route to the extreme”.

But groundlessness was not invented by Zen, nor by Nagarjuna, nor in the Prajnaparamita literature. It was there from the very beginning. The very first thoughts ascribed to the Buddha after his awakening are: “But this generation delights in alaya, is excited by alaya, enjoys alaya.” (MN 26).

I have intentionally left "alaya" untranslated here. The usual translation is “attachment”. I looked it up because I didn’t quite understand. People usually delight in what they are attached to, not in the attachment itself. But the first meaning of alaya is “abode”. What are we more attached to than the place where we stand, literally or metaphorically, the ground under our feet?

The Buddha elaborates: “For a generation delighting in alaya, excited by alaya, enjoying alaya, conditionality & dependent co-arising are hard to see.” Indeed the idea that there is no solid ground under our feet, but that the reality comes to be out of ignorance and repeating patterns based on our needs (dependent co-arising), is a hard nut to crack.

The Buddha calls it the three marks of existence: dukkha, anicca, anatta. It is the simple experience that reality is unsatisfactory, impermanent and without fixed core. Actually it is not that hard to see at all, but it’s hard to swallow. It is the simple observation that there are no certainties. There isn’t any certainty that I will still be alive tomorrow. Chances are the I am already dead when this text reaches you. I am not aware of any other teaching that takes groundlessness as its starting point instead of trying to sugarcoat it. But don't worry, as McMahan notices in the first part of his article, also for those who prefer not to see it, Buddhism offers plenty of grounds to hold on to.

There is another escape route. That is to mystify groundlessness as a very special mystical experience that only a few can achieve, only after long and arduous years of meditation. I must admit that the Zen tradition must plead guilty here. But that is not my understanding of Zen. A more recent development is the research into the effects of psychedelics. Some researchers wonder if these drugs can help us achieve these kinds of mystical experiences.

It’s all much simpler than that. Are we willing to look and see the obvious? I am aware that there is a lot of anxiety associated with that, but looking away is generally not the best strategy. This is what our meditation practice is about: the readiness to see, and finding the basic trust that this is possible, even when there is no ground.

Groundlessness is not nihilism. We need a ground to survive, so we need to create one, even if it’s temporary and not solid. When my kids were still at home, we often had long discussions at the kitchen table, about all kinds of deep existential questions. It became a running joke that one of my kids would shout: "We are all going to die!”, at which I would reply: “Yes, but what do we do in the meantime?”

It is a serious question. What do we do in the meantime? What ground do we choose to create? This is where compassion and responsibility come in. The readiness not to look away is already compassion. Starting from there, without a solid ground, can we enact a world based on compassion, and not on the desperate pursuit of satisfying our needs at any cost?

That’s what the first bodhisattva vow is about: “Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them”. That too is Zen.