Credits to the inspiration for this title. The article “Zen Anarchy” can be found here:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-cafard-zen-anarchy

Attachment to labels, titles, of practices can lead to an immediate question as to what the hell the article is even pointing towards. Some experience of stillness, silence, is needed to explore words alluding to the state talked about here. While the jnana of academic understanding is a path unto itself, one may find it a distant vibe from this sharing.

I have loved for many years the zen master Joshu. Joshu is considered by many to be one of the most noted and wisest masters of zen. Once, he was asked by a monk, “What is meditation?” Joshu’s responds: “It is not meditation.”

Tantra’s exploration of expanded states of awareness via the energies within existence and the body are too a pathway into the beyond that actually one finds to not be ‘beyond’ anything but our false, misguided understandings and limited systems of belief clouding our vision. In the Shiva Sutras, Shiva is asked, “When you are dancing, singing and smoking, what is the spiritual significance of such things?” Shiva answers: “All things, in their pure state, are spiritually significant.” This short sutra is the essence of the tantric path – uncovering the nature of divinity within the daily doings of living.

But these methods, these paths, are in their center pathless. Going totally into something, a state of totality, is the very essence of ANYTHING called meditation. Otherwise, the forms and practices are a lifeless ritual or subtly dogmatic habit of behavior.

Dropping the mind’s conditioned control and holding in place of the programmed understanding of life we have been handed, acquired and even asked for is the Tao, the Way, of the energy that is naturally meditative. This is due to a discovery which believing in has little value – living this discovery is everything. Meditation is just returning to the truth of life – enlightenment is, to quote Adyashanti, “…in the end, nothing more than the natural state of being.”

The last word to explore is “anarchy.” Here again, we will encounter (most probably) a mediated definition of this word, as it is highly demonized by historians, politicians and the educational system; rightfully so, as it is an energy which totally challenges the ground on which these and all institutions stand on.

So, dropping the idea that anarchy entails throwing Molotov cocktails and burning buildings, what is the spiritual significance of the word? My understanding, given the topic of meditation, is that this anarchy is the unborn, uncreated state of is-ness. The open field in which all exists and all comes, remains and then goes. Within this anarchy, the natural order is. So it is an anarchy only to what is false and imposed. Natures order, laws and rules are documented only by her very being! Understanding of this from outside experience is always partial.

The path exists to lead to the pathless – this is not limited even to zen and tantra practice. All genuine spiritual experience is, first, an unburdening of the false. The exoteric teachings about what is are for believers – this is the outer shell. Nothing wrong in it, but please do not be fooled that systems of belief are anything more than a taste of what is within us.

Dropping control, being natural, trusting Spirit, trusting a guide. These are the paths to the pathless. Dangerous? YES! The more ones feels that life itself is uncertain by its very nature. Yes, we do things to propagate, secure our lives and family, etc – here we are going much deeper than this. This type of hearing/understanding – that the experience of the boundless, formless, means that form has no role in our lives – simply shows a rigid belief in absolutes based largely in conditioning.