The Six Worlds of Samsara, Cont.

Of course, no conscious individual can function without a sense of identity. The ego about which we speak is the one which values itself and judges itself as it values and judges all the persons and things of its environment. The ego, then, is a fictitious creature. It has no real existence. It is a ghost-general that must be relieved of its command by being demoted, retired or killed. This process of ego elimination, which Christian monks and nuns call 'dying to self' and which Buddhists sometimes refer to as 'killing the fool,' is long, tedious, and, by definition, humiliating.

In Chan, ideally, the master confers privately every day with each person in his charge. To those who practice Seventh World Chan he assigns exercises which are designed to lead them to controlled states of concentration, meditation, and samadhi. To those who practice Eighth World Chan, he usually assigns a thought-frustrating riddle (a koan) the pondering of which will ultimately cause the ego briefly to annihilate itself (satori). But for those who are in the six worlds, the master has to go back to basics. During audiences with these persons, he begins the process of ego-elimination by determining which of the six segments of Samsara the novice is in. He then helps the novice to confront the truth about himself. Without this confrontation, there can be no progress. The novice must see for himself how he resorts to a particular survival strategy to gain his objectives, and how the use of this strategy is inimical to his spiritual development. The master usually hopes for a miracle and to facilitate one assigns a meditation exercise, but it is essentially by his own inspirational example and by his instructions and admonitions, both gentle and harsh, that the master is able to prod the novice to increased self-awareness and change.

The difficulty of this task is illustrated in the Chan story of the master and the three novices. The master greets his new charges and tells them that the first spiritual discipline he will impose upon them, effective immediately, is the rule of absolute silence. As he nods and turns away, the first novice calls, "Oh, Master. I can't tell you how happy I am to receive your instruction." Whereupon the second novice snarls, "You fool! Don't you realize that by saying that you broke the rule of silence?" And the third novice throws up his hands and sighs, "Lord! Am I the only one around here who can follow orders?"

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