seventh world of chan buddhism - Zen Buddhist Order of Hsu Yun

it doesn't even surprise him that when the preacher asks for dedicated souls to raise their
hands and shout Hallelujah, he complies without hesitation.
He joins his barber's church and enters what seems to him to be a new life, a pure and
love filled life. He easily differentiates friend from foe, good from evil, truth from lie. He
will finally know who his enemies are, the ones who were responsible for his failures. He
will identify Satan and his minions: the women who create lust; the wicked comrades who
entrapped him with lures of alcohol; the merchants, employers and politicians whose greed
cannot be sated. And the particular will extend to the general in a frenzy of sampling.
For as surely as we look eastward to see the rising sun, his enemy will soon become
some other religion or sect, some other nationality or race, some other economic class or
politically active group.. one that has conveniently been identified for him by his new
church. Religious leaders need to identify a powerful group enemy because they need to
avoid internecine strife. They need to prevent their parishioners from casting their Shadows
upon each other; and the most efficient way to avert this organizational catastrophe is to
direct everyone's individual shadow outside the congregation, to cast them collectively upon
some "menacing" alien group. Common hatred is the glue that holds congregations together.
Jesse Doe will beam and greet his fellow church members with unabashed affection.
Excited by the release of his long pent-up gods and eager to worship them, he will testify to
the power of God Almighty at every opportunity and never will he suspect that his
conversion, while obviously religious, is far from spiritual or that the changes he is
experiencing, while being dramatic, are neither deep nor permanent.
Would Jesse's fate have been different if he had gone to a Zendo instead of a church?
Not at all. It cannot be said often enough: Heaven and hell exist and they exist here and now
and in our minds. Unless we've been decapitated, we bring our heaven or our hell with us
wherever we go. Who dares to enter a synagogue, a mosque, a cathedral or a temple with the
intention of gratifying his ego, that patron of hell? Only a wretched fool would enter a holy
place in order to be seen and admired, as part of some hellish Six Worlds' strategy to gain
status for himself. People who join Zen groups often join for the same reasons that they join
any club. The harm is minimized according as they admit they are not there for spiritual
reasons.
So Jesse was a changed man; but the archetypal projections which instigated the
changes were designed for a young, maturing person. Jesse's person was as overripe as it was
underfinanced. He had projected the archetype of the Good Friend onto his fellow church
members when he was far beyond the need for large gene pools or the safety of the buddy
system and the herd; he had projected the archetype of the Hero onto the preacher, when he
was in need of a Savior not a social director or moral coach; and, of course, instead of
accepting responsibility for his own failures, he had cast past and future blame upon his
newly identified and adopted Shadow antagonists. (Should he have become sexually
attracted to a church "sister" he would have found himself confronted by an archetypal full-
CHAPTER 10 FIRST ZEN PRACTICE: THE 1:4:2 HEALING BREATH
S EVENTH W ORLD O F C HAN B UDDHISM
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