Riffin' On the Zen Peacekeeper's 3 Tenets

Recently, to my great pleasure, a new Zen temple officially opened its door in the very same town which Riffin’ On is based out of. I’m in the early stages, personally, of checking the place out, and while surfing their website I learned that they are an affiliate of an organization called the “ZPI” and that, as such, they are dedicated to “the Zen Peacekeepers’ Three Tenets”: “Not-knowing”, “Bearing Witness”, and “Taking Action”.

Personally, I have cut my teeth on materials steeped in the Tibetan and Indian traditions of Eastern spirituality- Hinduism and Buddhism, and everything else of resonance between. I can’t say that I’ve ever ran into these three tenets before, or a Zen lineage/tradition, but I have run into many traditions which organize themselves in virtually the same fashion- centered around interchangeable tenets rooted in Absolutism, leading to the peculiar situation of both of the other tenets, as well as the entirety of creation, being found within any one tenet on the list one chooses to meditate upon.

It’s a little like defining God the Father, as they do in the Old Testament, overtly, as “all-loving” and “all-knowing” and “all-powerful”…you can’t be “all-powerful” or “all-knowing” without being “all-loving” and essentially the subtext of it is that you need to resonate effectively with “all”…you need to be able to posture yourself truthfully in relation to the entirety of creation…that’s what righteous living truly is.

These tenets, in the various traditions that structure themselves as such, including this ZPI tradition, are impersonal manifestations of the Monotheistic Source, when you get down into the dirty details of their constructs. The tenet/principle of “Not-Knowing” is somehow an emanation of the very God which created you, when you call upon it. The same is true of “Bearing witness” and “Taking Action” in how they are defined by the tradition. It’s a mystical tradition. You achieve communion and channel the source through calling up these weighted, deliberately constructed, belabored over (with devotional practice) tenets.

They reduce it to a workout routine…to a muscle that can be targeted with specific action. This is how you chain a dragon, how you domesticate it to serve the visions of those ultimately who are asked to be stewards of creation.

What does it mean to call upon the tenet of “Not-knowing” and how is this both “bearing witness” and “taking action”? I have the answer instantly, apparently, because of prior Transcendental practice…this is a Transcendental framework ultimately, after all. If I didn’t know, however, merely asking that question and beginning exploratory thought/brainstorming will actually lead to enlightenment across time…it’s like these tenets have a mind of their own, as well as the capacity to manifest their will in the world.

You can kill the enlightened ones off, but you can’t kill the pursuit of enlightenment. We know this to be an inherent aspect of the subjective experience. It will always be a part of life. The paths build themselves, and, arguably, the greatest task humans are automatically tasked with executing is the construction of the path. We do it without knowing that we are doing as much.

You see, “not-knowing” is a type of open-endedness to the potential for Infinity to further obliterate either acute suffering, or the future potential for as much. At the level of universe, this tradition ultimately views particles as arising out of Infinity, and in dialogue with Infinity as such that they are being conditioned by the Universe at all moments.

Think on this construct long enough and eventually it means “while things are things…their states can miraculously change without a sense of observable/understandable causation… the dead can be brought back to life despite there being no replicateable underlying process by which such can be done… the sick can be entirely healed… one loaf and one fish can become many hundred loaves and fish…” … this is the fundamental mechanic of miracles.

We know, effectively, in the small sense of it. But we always acknowledge that what we know is arising entirely out of God…He is emanating the finite reality, He is substantiating it at all moments, and it is all subject entirely to His Will, and is capable of oddities we’ve never seen nor have been conditioned to expect.

In simple terms, the tenet of not-knowing is merely acknowledging that finite natures flow out of Infinity. You never can know anything finite fully, because it’s unknowable at its deepest core, which is God. You can know God effectively in regards to knowing you’re made in his image and this helps inform us what to do with out time in our lives… but you can’t know Him, comprehensively, because it is simply beyond us, and knowledge of Him is actually just direct experience of Him, not a thing referencing Him…

When we regard this “crude” material we call matter as such… as an offshoot of God, directly… as God’s body, in some meaningful sense of it, we have arrived at the tenet of “bearing witness”. We are seeing things as they are…we are seeing things as the Eastern Yogis who strive very adamantly in all that they do, see them. We are bearing witness in a radical way that the culture at hand has never fully considered. We are bearing witness at all moments in all actions. Not just when we put on our Sunday best or happen upon stretches of time where its suddenly time to go all-in on respect; every act you do, when you transform your consciousness as such, is as important as the priest taking the pulpit on Sunday, and in the blueprint of the Church, this is always what they needed from the masses…this is what their church was built to accomplish, and what they’re working to accomplish to this day.

Your glance can change lives. Witnessing slight irrationalities in public…will change lives. The thing is all around at all moments just wanting a chance to slip into the causation chain, for some embodied being to somehow reach back to the very Source of Existence and then produce a butterfly effect with their actions, no matter how minute. It’s an act of God when this happens, but it could manifest as a simple blink of an individual in a crowded coffee house. Where it will lead…it’s inevitable.

Which is exactly where I wanted to pivot into discussions of the tenet of “taking action”. That’s the action to be taken, largely. You don’t have to necessarily confront people (but we all know there are certain instances where confrontation is compassion…these are super rare in this day and age though). You don’t have to…cut off a locket of somebody’s hair and do a strange ritual, but you could. It’s, as Eric Clapton sang, “in the way that you use it”.

To understand what ought to be, is the same as having taken action. The world didn’t just, at the surface level, present it all to you. You refined your perceptions with your conceptions. If you found the vision of harmony, you’ve already largely “taken action” and it’s because you chose to see the world in terms of “not-knowing” and you followed through and “bore witness”. We’ve yet to develop the google glass augmented reality glasses which do this all for you… so thank you! You’ve already changed the world drastically for the better if you’ve done this.