Does Zen have a subtext? The short answer is yes—the long answer is there is more than one subtext although there is actually only one.

Before I go on this voyage of discovery the pertinent question is what do we mean by subtext? The short answer is that subtext lies under or behind the actual words we read or speak in a text in the example of a play. Subtext is not said although it is meant. When the first slogan of Zen says “a special transmission outside the Buddhist canon” this, it could be argued, alludes to subtext. The discourses of the Buddha, to be sure, point to what is certainly beyond the canon.

Turning for a moment to the problematical side of subtext—the long answer—a reader tends to make up their own subtext, imagining or interpreting a Zen text, for example, in ways that the text does not suggest. This boils down to a kind of eisegesis, that is, reading into a particular text one’s own peculiar subtext. If someone, for example, says that modern Zen has been pyschologized they are referring to the fact that some interpreters of Zen believe there is a psychological subtext to Zen although the evidence that there is is rather weak. Adding to this problem, since there can be more than one subtext behind Zen, this can lead to a battle over subtexts—a subtext-machy. Such warfare can lead to a vicious polarization within the ranks of Zen and Buddhism in general.

Leaving aside these problems, we come to the real issue: is there only one subtext in Zen and Buddhism? The answer is of course yes, there is only one subtext. However, it is a subtext that requires that we awaken to the transcendent or the same, pure Mind—not the little mind of our thoughts and beliefs, but the universal Mind which is the very substance of reality. With such an awakening, koans, for example, become clear. The guesswork is gone. Those who have awakened fully comprehend Joshu’s No, in other words.

There are very old passages from the Pali canon of Buddhism which clearly allude to a realizable transcendent subtext. Here is just one example from the Udana.

“Monks, there exists that condition where is neither earth nor water nor fire nor air: wherein is neither the sphere of infinite space nor of infinite consciousness nor of nothingness nor of neither-consciousness-nor-unconsciousness; where there is neither this world nor a world beyond nor both together nor moon-and-sun. Thence, monks, I declare is no coming to birth; thither is no going (from life); therein is no duration; thence is not falling; there is no arising. It is not something fixed, it moves not on, it is not based on anything. That indeed is the end of Ill (dukkha).”

In the Samyutta-Nikaya (Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation) we come across an interesting discourse (Pathamamahanama Sutta) in which Mahanama becomes muddled regarding the Buddha’s teaching and the Sangha. He laments: “If at this moment I should die, what would be my destination, what would be my future bourn?” (S. v. 369). The Buddha essentially tells Mahanama that while his body which originated from mother and father is subject to death, that is, to breaking apart and dispersal, his mind or citta is not.

“But his mind, which has been fortified over a long time by faith, virtue, learning, generosity, and wisdom—that goes upwards, goes to distinction (viseso)."

Then the Buddha further illustrates what he means with a fitting analogy. There is no question that the mind transcends the body.

“Suppose, Mahanama, a man submerges a pot of ghee or a pot of oil in a deep pool of water and breaks it. All of its shards and fragments would sink downwards, but the ghee or oil there would rise upwards. So too, Mahanama, when a person’s mind has been fortified over a long time by faith, virtue, learning, generosity, and wisdom, right here crows ... or various creatures eat his body .... But his mind, which has been fortified over a long time by faith, virtue, learning, generosity, and wisdom—that goes upwards, goes to distinction (viseso)” (S. v. 369).

The subtext of this discourse is transcendent. The perfected Mind is not subject to death. Turning back to the subject of Zen, this is from Bodhidharma’s Bloodstream Sermon:

"Deluded people don't know who they are. Something so hard to fathom is known by a Buddha and no one else. Only the wise know this mind, this mind called dharma-nature, this mind called liberation. Neither life nor death can restrain this mind. Nothing can. It's also called the Unstoppable Tathagata, the Incomprehensible, the Sacred Self, the Immortal, the Great Sage. Its names vary, but not its essence. Buddhas vary too, but none leaves his own mind" (Red Pine, Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, p. 23).

Wishing to conclude here, one final comment is in order. Modern Zen’s subtext is not a transcendent one in my opinion. It seems to me that the modern subtext is psychological, subjective, learning to live in the moment, and believing that death is nirvana.