Online Sangha

I've been gratified over the years to encounter a small but steady circle of fellow hermits on social media. It's always encouraging to meet others on the path – a particular challenge that distinguishes our practice from that of our cœnobitic (collectively practicing) brothers and sisters.

However, the quality of our experiences, while less frequent, can be notably higher.

Because hermit monks meet on rigidly equal ground. We're ordained by no-one except our similarly equal mothers. Therefore we share, compare, and contrast from a position of parity.

And as none of us can invoke rank to overrule or silence another, we tend to do all of this freely, in sincere respect and gratitude.

Just having someone to talk to. Just that, leads us to cherish each other.

This is radically different from the way companionship works inside, where dominating "lesser" sangha is the defining role of teacher or senior student.

The obedience and hierarchy that are necessary in the monastery or Zen centre are pointless – impossible, actually – on our path; and as a hermit's teachers are often impersonal, we're in little danger of miring up in an obedience fetish.

Obedience to whom?

Throw in our civilian clothes, and layfolk are liable to be a bit mystified about what it is we "do". In such situations, it's natural to cite first what we don't do.

• We don't teach.
• We don't preach.
• We don't accept supervision from those who do.
• And we seldom practice in groups.

Most incisively, we cleave to our founder's insistence that enlightenment is not conferred. It's yours for the taking, and can't be refused or rescinded by anyone else.

Thus, the blog and social media component of my practice isn't about claiming authority I don't have. My efforts here aren't meant to teach others or arbitrate their enlightenment.

Rather, they help fulfil my duty of sangha. Supplying, for the most part, but receiving as well, when I'm lucky.

I greatly empathise with and appreciate my brothers and sisters on the path. This is a lonely calling, hard to triangulate, because our mistakes are made in solitude. Which means I'm frequently enlightened within minutes of encounters with other seekers.

A conundrum that's tormented me for 40 years, they resolved long ago.

Shackle struck, ego eluded.

Advance one step.


For those interested, my coordinates are:

https://universeodon.com/@RustyRing
https://bsky.app/profile/rusty-ring.bsky.social
https://twitter.com/Rusty_Ring

(My timeline on these platforms is rather more political these days than I'm comfortable with, but don't be intimated; I prioritise good conversations about Zen and practice, and related topics.)

Maximum Illumination

Enlightenment is the stated goal of Buddhism, possibly the only doctrine all denominations share, though variously defined.

As far as I know, all Zen lineages, diverse though we are, uphold the conviction that enlightenment is possible in this life; that it comes irrespective of social and material distinctions; and that meditation is the fundamental discipline of enlightenment practice.

In theory, we also hold our leaders to a "maximum illumination" standard; that is, the teacher must be the most enlightened person in the zendo. The old Chàn chronicles preserve accounts of itinerant peasants summarily unseating exalted abbots in dharma combat. And if that martial art has now mellowed to ritual sparing between genial sanghamates, in those old Chinese records it's presented as deadly earnest.

All of this goes to the strength with which the Ancestors cleaved to a central principle. To wit: if we're going to dropkick the Buddha's explicit orders for an egalitarian sangha, then the brother or sister monk we perch precariously on that perilous peak must at minimum embody awakening.

And it's at this point that we slam smack into the Christian concept of antinomianism.

For among the many commonalities our two religions share is an insistence on the possibility – nay, obligation – of attaining a superior spiritual state in this life. We call it enlightenment, they call it salvation, but though our understandings of those states differ in important ways, our certainty that they exist prompts coreligionists to announce themselves special and demand extra-scriptural privilege.

Specifically, they declare themselves leaders.

And this is where the antinomianism comes in. Because upon their ascension to secular power, two unproductive phenomena abruptly co-arise:

1. Their conduct becomes demonstrably unenlightened.

2. They insist this unenlightened conduct is in fact the height of enlightenment; it's just that the sangha are too pedestrian to grasp their higher wisdom.

And that second one is antinomianism. You see, it's really very simple: treating others like doormats is the soul of bodhisattva practice. It's just what arhats do, and if you were one, you'd get that

And there-in lies a crisis. Because it's not.

Not that defining enlightenment isn't hard. How can you tell if a person has attained a state that can't be comprehended, or even defined?

As the ancient Zen joke would have it: how do you eff the ineffable?

I've thought about this a lot. I've scrutinised my own experience; what's happened on the cushion, where my heart moves during and after kensho, what's changed in my personality in two decades of mindful practice.

I haven't become enlightened, but I've grown measurably, and the Buddha said that's evidence of nascent awakening.

So becoming a better person than you were pre-zazen is the test. Are you less judgemental now, more empathetic? Less uptight, more patient? Calmer? More loving, less ambitious?

Has your ego diminished, or inflated? Are you supple or brittle? Do you fret more in social contention, or less?

How do you measure up on the 8 Worldly Dharmas Illumination Indicator?

If these lights aren’t green, why waste your life becoming an even bigger ass than you already are by being boss?

In the end, I've gained one practical insight into the quandary of human limitation:

–––> It's what you do with it.

(NB: Not a new concept on these pages, but a new application of it.)

Annoyance, impatience, disappointment, despair, frustration; what do you do when they happen?

Do you use or manipulate others? Do you make cutting remarks or determine to get even?

Do you apologise when you've behaved in an ignorant, superior, or abusive fashion?

These are universal human challenges, but a moral authority must own and publicly grapple with them. And by this standard, you can see the risk you run to your own practice when you set yourself up as a guru.

Which is why my brotherly counsel is not to.

Of one thing I'm sure: selfish, inconsiderate, preëmptory behaviour is not a sign of enlightenment. And refusing to confess, apologise, and atone afterward indicates you're not even on the road.

It's not that I don't yet know enough about enlightenment.

It's that I know too much.


(Photo courtesy of Unsplash.com and a generous photographer.)

What It Takes

Long ago, in the first years of my Zen practice, I encountered a teaching that's remained in my mind through the intervening years. Unfortunately, despite my obsession for note-taking and record-keeping, an hour of combing through my files hasn't produced line or author.

So I'll have to report both from memory as best I can.

I recall that the source was a modern Chinese Chàn teacher, born in the 19th century. This makes him almost certainly Xuyun; the more since in the course of my digging I discovered in an early practice folder a text file of his teachings. Sadly, this wasn't one of them.

Whoever it was, the Chàn master in question had this to say:

"You ask why there are so many schools of Chàn. [This was possibly translated as 'Zen'.] It is because people have different natures. They require different practices. That is why there are so many schools of Chàn. It takes that many."

At the time, having just taken the Zen path following a lifetime of convicted Christianity, I was impressed by the wisdom and generosity of this pronouncement.

As my practice grew deeper and broader, I would come to see the very soul of Zen in it.

Such freedom from jealousy and turf-warring is rare; nowhere more so than in religion.

In the course of my subsequent Zen vocation, I've been a bit disappointed, if not surprised, to find that this is not in fact our party line. The truth is, though Zenners score higher on the many-paths test than Christians (low bar that they are), our reflex too is to malign teachers in other schools; even other teachers in our own.

The error in this goes beyond fundamental insecurity and egotism. At the end of the day, like all we purchase with that two-sided coin, it deprives us of wealth.

Because other schools, lineages, denominations, even faiths (that's right, I said it) encode centuries of enlightenment instruction. Buddhism isn't like other religions; our founder said enlightenment comes of action (meditation), not faith. The clear implication is that the world is full of people very unlike us who must nevertheless be enlightened.

And that means an honest seeker won't simply tolerate superficial differences in doctrine and dogma, he or she will welcome them as a blessing, delving into them to profit from the insight they embody.

In the end, I'd suggest we go Xuyun one better:

Given that our species is still stumbling around in the dark, 2500 years beyond the Buddha, screaming war and weeping bitter tears, it's obvious we don't have enough schools yet.

Killing the Buddha

"If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him."

This well-worn Chàn koan, attributed to Linji Yixuan, has the sting befitting the ancestor of Rinzai. (Which word is just "Linji" pronounced badly.) Down the generations, this single sentence has attracted a wealth of commentary in the Great Sangha, and has to some extent even become familiar to the world beyond it.

Shunryu Suzuki – Soto priest, founder of San Francisco Zen Centre, prominent ancestor of Western Zen – inflected it in at least two directions: “Kill the Buddha if the Buddha exists somewhere else" (an invocation of things as they are), and "Kill the Buddha, because you should resume your own Buddha nature,” a timely reminder that you're the only one who can save you.

Others rush to insist that the Buddha in this directive isn't the actual Buddha, i.e., the man Gautama (though I believe he is, but more on that in a second). In this reading, it's really a warning against mistaken Buddhas: inferior teachers, your own delusions, received wisdom.

Perfectly sound, but a bit churchy for my taste.

So I've been turning this commandment in the light for about twenty years now. To me it does in fact refer to the historical Buddha. Because he's much more likely to hurt you than anyone else.

Some huckster in a plaid sport coat could con a minority of seekers with his pious salvation scams, but most of us will walk past that. No, to screw the majority, you need the real thing. That'll get us all worshipping when we should be practicing.

'Fore you know it, robes and gongs and incense will be all that's left of Buddhism. We'll be anointing statues, chanting names, venerating relics. At last some clever-dick will bust out the sutras and start telling us the Buddha said this and the Buddha said that, all in defence of this massive religious folk dance we will all have to complete before we're allowed to seek enlightenment.

Hell, with a little luck, we might even get the Buddha to straight-up end all Buddhism on Earth.

Which is why you want to kill that mofo good.

One good whop with your monk stick.

Because the fact is, Gautama left us 2500 years ago. He spoke his piece, left his treasures, and sensibly died.

Don't let a zombie eat your brain.


(Photo of an arrestingly Buddhic road in Uzbekistan courtesy of Arina Pan and Wikimedia Commons.)

One Religion

I never get used to the fact that there's exactly one religion on this planet. Or humanity's eternal frantic protest that there are in fact many.

Convicted Christian for the first 2/3 of my life, the hypocrisy – worse yet, the casuistry – of that sangha was deeply troubling for me from the beginning. At long length I was convinced to seek better company, for my own welfare.

I was therefore heartened when, early in my subsequent Buddhist training, I encountered Zen priest and historian Brian Daizen Victoria, whose book Zen At War documents the way Japanese Buddhists abandoned their most essential convictions during WWII to embrace the horrors of Imperial Japan – even to the point of declaring Emperor worship, and all the murder and violence his servants demanded, the highest expression of the Buddha Way.

The willingness of a Buddhist cleric and scholar to "go there", as the Americans say, reinforced my faith in my new path.

Wrote Daizen:

My reading of Buddhist political history tells me that every time Buddhist leaders have closely aligned themselves with the political ruler of their day, the Buddha Sangha has become corrupt and degenerate... The Sangha's often slavish subservience to, and actions on behalf of, their rulers have resulted, in my opinion, in its becoming the de facto pimp and prostitute of the State.

Change Buddhist terms for Christian, and you get an exact description of what's happening in Christian-majority nations today, most notably the US and Russia.

I suggest that the opportunity this offers Zenners is to let go of our reflexive tendency to assume we're different from our Christian neighbours, and instead consider how our own institutions subtly or overtly call us to analogous conduct. (Yes-butting and what-abouting Daizen, for starters.)

And how must we act, in light of this insight?


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Gone, Gone

This morning a brother in my Twitter sangha posted the following five paragraphs from the Pali canon (Dutiyaassutavāsutta, SN 12.62).

OK, four, plus intro. That, with allowance made for the verbose, refrain-heavy nature of Buddhist scripture, really comes to about half as much.

Nevertheless, I've dropped a TLDR at the end for the hard-of-waiting.

(Note: "disillusioned" is a positive thing in Buddhist texts. It means "freed from delusion". When you think about it, it's weird that we use that word as a complaint in English.)

So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s monastery. …

“Mendicants, when it comes to this body made up of the four primary elements, an unlearned ordinary person might become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed. Why is that? This body made up of the four primary elements is seen to accumulate and disperse, to be taken up and laid to rest. That’s why, when it comes to this body, an unlearned ordinary person might become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed.

But when it comes to that which is called ‘mind’ and also ‘sentience’ and also ‘consciousness’, an unlearned ordinary person is unable to become disillusioned, dispassionate, or freed. Why is that? Because for a long time they’ve been attached to it, thought of it as their own, and mistaken it: ‘This is mine, I am this, this is my self.’ That’s why, when it comes to this mind, an unlearned ordinary person is unable to become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed.

But an unlearned ordinary person would be better off taking this body made up of the four primary elements to be their self, rather than the mind. Why is that? This body made up of the four primary elements is seen to last for a year, or for two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, or a hundred years, or even longer.

But that which is called ‘mind’ and also ‘sentience’ and also ‘consciousness’ arises as one thing and ceases as another all day and all night. It’s like a monkey moving through the forest. It grabs hold of one branch, lets it go, and grabs another; then it lets that go and grabs yet another. In the same way, that which is called ‘mind’ and also ‘sentience’ and also ‘consciousness’ arises as one thing and ceases as another all day and all night.

TLDR: It's not hard to accept that our bodies are temporary. What we really don't like is that our personhood is just as biodegradable. It changes constantly – we cease to exist and then reappear in different form from moment to moment – until one day no trace, physical or metaphysical, remains of us.

Reading this, I became disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed.

Deep bow to my brother.


(Photo of a fragment from an 18th century Thai anthology of Pali canon teachings courtesy of the Chester Beatty Library [Dublin] and Wikimedia Commons.)

The Most Hated Ideology

In 2015 I uploaded a post entitled Forgiveness. It's about forgiveness.

Last year, after almost a decade of being roundly ignored by the Internet, the article was flagged as "sensitive content", fenced behind a warning to visitors, and then a second fence that requires a Google sign-in to pass.

Evidently to shield children from my dangerous advocacy of compassion.

There are times when the irony on this rock gets so thick that one is literally at a loss for words.

Which is why I've haven’t said anything about this until now.

In the article, I point out that I've consistently attracted more mob-borne hatred when advocating for forgiveness than any other topic. By way of example, I cite reactions to a comment I made about Frank Meeink, one-time neo-Nazi who atoned for his hateful conduct and actively defected to the side of kindness and reason. And I wound the thing up with a reference to Angulimala, a figure from the sutras who renounced his career as a serial killer and became a disciple of the Buddha.

I've now re-read Forgiveness half a dozen times, with long periods of reflection between, and still can't find a single line any rational person would call offensive. (It's true I can get, shall we say, "passionate", about certain subjects, nay judgemental in some cases. But unless I'm blind to something, Forgiveness contains no such cases.)

Instead, it appears that someone – or several someones – reported this little-read post from my back-catalogue simply because I advocated mindful compassion toward a repentant Nazi.

More perplexing still, Google also agrees that this is too shocking a contemplation for unsuspecting surfers to stumble across unawares. And much too shocking for kids, under any circumstances.

So, hey. I've been wrong before. If any readers game enough to breech the safety fences could read the text behind them and explain to me where you find offence, I would be sincerely grateful.

Please post your thoughts in the comment section below, if you don't mind. My word that I'll be equanimous toward all, pro- or anti-Ring, that are on-topic and not personally abusive to anyone.

Because I think the Great Sangha needs to start talking about this forgiveness thing.


(Photo courtesy of Damian Gadal and Wikimedia Commons.)

Hermit Nation

For some years I've enjoyed sporadic correspondence with a fellow Zenner in England. After a few less-than-uplifting experiences with her Zen teacher, she's decided to try the hermit path, and asked me for a little sanghic perspective. Inevitably, the exchange ended up clarifying some things in my own mind as well. (Hence the value of sangha. As any teacher will tell you, helping others helps the helper.) So I thought I'd excerpt a bit of that conversation here, to spread the support around.

The sister in question is feeling the pull of her nature, though uncertain she can sustain a solitary practice, or that it will prove as fulfilling as the organised model. At the same time she feels like the institution doesn't respect her – that it views her as an isolated failure that must be repaired, or in extremis, rejected. That has led her to question her teacher's "never hermit" stance on alternatives.

As always, I didn't advocate any path to her, since I lack comprehensive knowledge of the facts and entities in play, and anyway, it ain't my karma at risk. But on this issue of only-ness, I felt compelled to give witness.

And so I wrote the following, with allowance for judicious editing:

As is frequently the case, I've been struck by the similarity of our life paths. We are, as I often say, a nation. This is very hard for the gregarious to grasp.

Although the neo-traditional Zen institution views people of our nature as unevolved or learning disabled, the fact is we are and always have been a demographic. One unserved by the innovated monastery model.

The same one that gave us the Buddha and Bodhidharma, to name just two.

And we seem to be coming out of the closet in greater numbers since the Boomers – great believers in authority, their market stance notwithstanding – began their slide into irrelevance.

Hermits don't necessarily seek isolation from others – I don't – but most of my adult life I've lived in rural areas; was raised in one, and have chosen to live in others when choice was mine.

But we live in a time when the rural areas that used to be despised by the urban and urbane have become chic, and they're clearing us rednecks away so they can take our land. It's a big topic, and for me, a painful one. Reminds me of the age of enclosure, and the segmenting of the European countryside into landed estates, which was the driving force that colonised the New World. 'Cept there's no place for us peasants to go this time.

From a practice perspective it doesn't matter much; you can be a hermit anywhere. But my preference is to be comfortably buffered from the rest of my species, and to be in daily contact with what remains. And that's harder to achieve in town.

As for your musings on Zen, I quite agree on all of them. Most of us find, when we encounter each other, that we've had similar experiences, received similar openings, and have much to offer each other in the way of teaching and support. We're the Buddha's only given monastic model, but formal Zen teachers (as well as those of other faiths) are great ones for saying that an unsupervised monk will quickly go off the rails and begin spouting bizarre, self-serving nonsense.

Which happens, of course, but not more often than it does in the Institution. And the result isn't crazier or more dangerous. From where I'm standing, it's clear that ordination is a risky state that few survive. Whereas my formal eremitical practice of assuming I understand nothing, mixed with a disciplining lack of social acceptance, has done a pretty good job of keeping me in my lane.

Anyway, when you mention Zen masters who run their monks as servants, that's my immediate thought. As a hermit, I can't imagine anybody cleaning up after me. Aside from the presumption, there's the fact that cleaning up my own messes is central to my practice; confronting chaos, accepting the necessity of soiling and breaking things, understanding how entirely I participate in universal entropy.

I suspect teachers who don't settle their own accounts have forgotten how unimpressive they are; given their working conditions, they can't help it.

As for me, "I'm nobody" has been my breathing mantra for twenty years. And I still think I'm the lead character in a movie from time to time; that tells you how much harder ordained types must have it.

Any road, society creates us, through a sort of petty terrorism, and at some point we just shrug and pull on the robe, to its great indignation. It's one reason I won't accept spiritual authority from other humans. I'm sometimes asked to address groups about Zen, and I always start by pointing out that I've never been ordained by anyone but my mother, that I have no unique understanding of anything, and that the next Zenner they meet will probably tell them I'm wrong about everything.

And I finish by telling them that anyone who says different about themselves is lying.

We hermits are a very diverse crowd – if we can be said to be a crowd – but I suspect all of us would agree with that last statement, at least.


Robin

(Photo courtesy of Matt Sclarandis and Unsplash.com.)

How Sudden Are You?

So another visit to the annals of early Buddhism has yielded a further bit of provocative trivia: subitism is very old. Possibly as old as the religion itself.

This contentious point of Buddhist teaching, whose name draws on the French « subite » – "sudden" – asserts that enlightenment is a discrete event that occurs all at once in a blinding flash that explodes in your brain, changing both it and you forever. (The Christian adjective for this notion is "catastrophic", as in catastrophic conversion, the Evangelical ideal.)

The opposite view is gradualism, in which enlightenment slowly accrues over time through diligent practice, and only in turning back does one realise it has, at some point, been attained. (And Western Buddhism often implies that it may remain occult even to death.)

This is the main doctrinal difference between Rinzai and Soto, the two extant schools of Japanese Zen. (Seon, Korea's Chàn-descended tradition, also embraces sudden insight, but interestingly, has divided into parties over whether further practice afterward is required to "ripen" it, versus insistence that the bang itself is comprehensive; you're done.)

Rinzai students meditate to precipitate the long-awaited thunderbolt that strikes off the shackles of delusion – weakened beforehand by the crowbar of koanic logic – leaving a mind gleaming in perfect clarity.

Soto types sit for insight – a post-cognitive grasp of the koanic nature of existence, which, over a period of years or lives, eventually calibrates our minds to the universal frequency – though we may not apprehend for some time that our minds have inexplicably taken to gleaming in perfect clarity.

I'd always assumed subitism developed within Zen itself, and was surprised to learn that it actually came from the Southern School of Chàn, having been planted there by none other than 8th century founder and Huineng successor, Shenhui. Further study reveals that the two perspectives were already current in Bodhidharma's India, and may have touched off the first great theoretical debate in Buddhism

The topic isn't pedantic; it strikes at the very nature of enlightenment, and therefore Buddhism. Are we a religion, as subitism suggests, leading faithful practitioners to concrete, certifiable metaphysical transformation; or a philosophy, as gradualism would have it, shifting the adherent's perception by subtle and cumulative means?

History tends rather to support the first, though test cases are often ambiguous. Exhibit A would be the Buddha himself, said to attain enlightenment at an exact moment – upon seeing the morning star after eight days of intensive practice. The softness in that argument comes from his description of the phenomenon, devoid of fireworks, euphoria, or choirs of angels. He just… woke up. (The title we know him by translates as "The One Who Awakened".)

The legend of Bodhidharma also implies a sudden change – we're told he sat before a wall for nine years and "became enlightened", though we have even fewer particulars about the mechanism of that. To the best of my knowledge he never described it, or specified a time, date, or even season. Did he "become enlightened" in a flash, or did he just notice that it had happened, and get up?

And somewhat strangely, Dogen – founder of Soto – by his own detailed admission also received catastrophic illumination. According to the man himself, he was meditating up a storm when the jikijitsu suddenly whacked his dozing seatmate with the kyôsaku. At the crack of the cane, Dogen awakened as well.

Yet this is also the guy who told us enlightenment is gradual.

So clearly the distinction isn't simple. There are many Soto stories of enlightenment events like Dogen's – moments where the dam broke to the fall of a final raindrop, and nothing was the same again. What's common to both teachings is that getting to that point, whether it arrives with chirping birds or marching bands, is intricate, esoteric practice, demanding much zazen and maintenance of one's perceptual instrument.

And that makes the query a bit beside the point, though it does remain intellectually stimulating.

Rather a koan in its own right, really.


(Photo courtesy of Felix Mittermeier and Wikimedia Commons.)/span>

In Nerd We Trust

This is a preaching Buddha (not to be confused with a teaching Buddha). As you can see, he's enumerating something on his fingers.

Which makes me smile. I've always been amused by the fixation in my religion with numbered lists.

We're not alone in this, of course. The 99 Names of God; the 10 Commandments; the 7 Deadly Sins; the 285 Rules of Acquisition: didacticism is a hallmark of scripture-based faiths.

But we take the prize. To be precise, we take it to town. Then we get on a ship and take it 'round the world, three or four times. And we're currently working on a way to shoot it into space.

Because we have an astonishing number of numbers. (Though I can't actually report that number here, because – ahem – we've never counted them.)

The impulse is honest, of course. Our insistence on rational analysis and objective experience over revealed truth is, in my opinion, our greatest strength. Several of these lists (the 8 Worldly Dharmas, the 7 Factors of Enlightenment, the 5 Recollections, and certainly, the Eightfold Path and 4 Noble Truths) have made cameos in these pages.

It's true that the power of these teachings is somewhat diffused by our Ancestors' equal passion for the 6 Aspects of Spiciness, the 9 Manifestations of Unrealised Déjà Vu, the 17 Origins of Pre-Supper Sleepiness, and the whole Buddhist canon of catalogues – which somehow exceeds our zeal for verifying whether those things actually exist before we catalogue them.

But if our compulsive Asian bookkeeping does at times get a little precious, it's merely an over-enthusiastic response to a very cogent teaching: that religious practice is for here.

Because if you're really doing a real religion, you're not waiting for some imagined afterlife to see results. Nor do you fabricate evidence of results in this one.

You pay attention. You watch the world turning and you turning with it, and you document daily if and how this crap is working.

And you better believe you count those beans.

Because as any boffin will tell you: in faba veritas.


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

What the Buddha's Master Taught Him

Ānāpānasmṛti – zazen, more or less – was the practice the Buddha's own instructor taught. It's a fairly mutinous, fundamentalist take on the subject, for a time and place where meditation had, as Christian Meditation master Laurence Freeman would later warn, become freighted with liturgy and expectations.

To this day, similar straightforward, unmuddled models are typical of contemplative schools across religions. For the Great Sangha, the primordial source of instruction is the Ānāpānasmṛti Sutra, according to which the entire form amounts to following the breath and addressing bodily drives, with an eye to drawing them down to a functional minimum.

This is still canon Zen, with allowance made for minor variation among schools and individuals.

Of course, this being Buddhism, we also immediately undertake to audit proper application of this too easily-memorised method against a multi-level numbered diagnostic, to wit, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment.

Your performance steps include:

• Smṛti, or mindfulness, leading to consciousness of objective reality, and – in direct contradiction to current Zen teaching – contemplation of dharma teachings.

• Dharmapravicaya, or analysis, employment of which leads to insight.

• Vīrya, or disciplined perseverance (note the relationship of this Sanskrit word to "virility"), i.e., consistent repetition of sitting.

• Prīt, joyful transport, which happens if you're doing it dutifully. (And more importantly, doesn't if you're not.)

• Prashrabdhi, peaceful abiding, though that's the opposite of caring about literally any of this. Leading to:

• Samādhi, an abiding state of mindful awareness.

And finally:

• Upekshā, detachment. You no longer invest in winning or losing, unseduced by the myriad delusions of separate existence, material progress, or personal esteem. Also described as "the death of ego".

It's possible I was a bit irreverent up there, but in fairness to myself, there's just something absurd about "don't-knowing" in seven explicated stages; refusing to admit that out loud amounts to dishonesty. Still, as a rough guide, the Seven Employee Improvement Goals are worthwhile; informed contemplation of same can in fact keep your head in the game.

As long as they don't become the game.

And according to the Buddha, the practice of ānāpānasmṛti in this fashion ultimately leads to the Big W: the release from suffering.

Which teaching is exact, per my experience.

For short periods, anyway.

But I'm not done yet.


(Photo courtesy of Mattia Faloretti and Unsplash.com.)/span>

Reverse Psychology

The Buddha was a crafty devil. The stuff he most cared about (posture, vegetarianism, teachers, ordination...), he never mentioned once.

Higher Ground

I'd been a hermit monk for 5 years when I heard on my truck radio that after the news the host would speak with a US Army chaplain just back from Iraq.

I have a tetchy relationship with military chaplaincy. At best it enables sin. At worst it weaponises it. None of the planet's mainstream religions endorse collective destruction, no matter how vociferously their institutions argue otherwise.

On the other hand, the war industry mass-produces humans badly in need of refuge, which makes military chaplains a very good thing. It's just that I doubt that's the reason they were commissioned. But some do it anyway – help the exploited survive hell – even though it contradicts the larger mission, which is to exploit those people

Still, when the radio presenter announced her upcoming guest, I instinctively moved to change stations.

Then I thought, hold on. Don't I sell myself as a Zen monk? Haven't I taken a precept to strive after an ideal that rejects otherness and recognises that we're all the product of forces beyond our control?

Haven't I myself committed acts of great hypocrisy? And aren't I now poised, finger on trigger, to commit another one?

Bodhisattvas test your sincerity before they offer their gifts.

So I stood down. If this guy started selling partisan pap, I could always press the scan button later.

And that's how I received one of the central tenets of my monastic practice.

In the interview, the officer was asked for an example of the sort of ministry he provided. He related the story of a young soldier who came to him after smashing into a private Iraqi home and spraying the entire weeping family with automatic weapons fire

As they huddled on the floor of their own living room.

It's to the young man's enduring credit, and that of those who raised him, that this atrocity took him to the brink of suicide. Decent people aren't able to do this sort of thing. No matter what kind of clothes they're wearing or what they've pledged to whom.

This one couldn't stop putting himself in the place of that Iraqi father. Seeing himself through his target's eyes. The complete absence of justice or justification. Who he was in that scenario

Ha!, thought I. Get yourself out of this one, warrior preacher.

The chaplain's response was notable first for what he didn't say. He didn't talk about orders, patriotism, or service. He didn't present excuses or greater-good defences, or displace blame onto the soldier's government or superiors. There were no references to geopolitics or God's will.

He simply asked the broken man what his victim's duty was.

I can imagine the man was taken aback. I certainly was.

"If matters had been reversed," said the Army chaplain, "and he'd killed your family, what would your duty to him be?"

"I… I guess, to forgive him," the soldier stammered.

"Then that's his duty to you as well."

I've been meditating on this koan ever since.

We're taught early on that forgiveness is next to godliness, that we must do it. And that's certainly correct.

But what we're not told is that we also have a right to demand it. Because it's also everybody else's unshirkable responsibility. This was the Buddha's teaching to Aṅgulimāla: when you're no longer the person who committed the crime, atonement, not condemnation, is your burden.

I'll warrant readers who were offended by my criticisms of military chaplains are little mollified by my chastened gratitude to this one for his insight.

But I suspect the man himself will forgive me.

Deep bow to all who labour honestly for higher ground.


(Photo of US Army Buddhist Chaplain insignia courtesy of Ingrid Barrentine, the Northwest Guardian newspaper, and Wikimedia Commons.)

The Busless Bus

Chàn fascinates me. Founded in China during the 6th century CE, it's the parent tradition to the three current national schools of Buddhist dhyana practice – Seon, Thiền, and Zen – as well as to China's own recently reconstituted Chàn movement. Every time I dip into these waters, I find new challenges to my own assumptions and to those that contemporary gatekeepers insist are fundamental to Zen. It's a deeper and more braided source of these than anything else I've found except the historical Buddha and primordial Buddhist practice models.

Case in point: I lately learned that the early Chinese chronicles sometimes affixed the label "One Vehicle School" to the amorphous movement that would eventually coalesce into Chàn. This in reference to the Buddhist concept of ekayāna, a Sanskrit term that also translates as "one path".

Seems shockingly doctrinaire for a loose affiliation of fellow-travellers, scattered throughout the then-existing Chinese Buddhist denominations, whose defining practice was to sit on their backside and cast off delusion.

Until you realise that their "One Vehicle" has rather a lot of seats.

Specifically, it has all of the seats.

For the essential tenet here springs from the Buddha's own teaching that we all eventually attain enlightenment, whether in this life or another. It therefore follows that all paths lead to the summit.

And therefore all paths are valid.

And therefore condemnation of others' practice is not.

Ekayāna doesn't get much ink in the Buddhist press these days, for reasons any incisive student of religion can grasp. As comforting as it is – we all make it through one day, regardless of the errors that occasionally set us back a thousand years – One Path is a lousy business model.

How can you profit, in gold or glory, if all you're selling is something folks can get for free somewhere else?

But this early doctrine of proto-Chàn does tend to explain all those ancient accounts of illiterate hermits coming down off the mountain and besting the local master – and also the continuing Zen strain of "you're not the boss of me" that current-day teachers' pets so haughtily deride.

As a hermit, I might be expected to cleave to the ekayāna viewpoint myself, and of course it has always been a keystone of my perception and practice, even though I only just learned the word for it. However, like all truth, it becomes false when distilled into dogma.

It isn't true that all paths are valid, even if we do ultimately survive them. You can build a cage of freedom.

But it's a cogent corrective to the invalid paths the Great Sangha, chasing worldly objectives that have little to do with saving all sentient beings, collectively stumble down.

May we each strive to practice more and preach less.


(Photo of ancient sculpture of Bodhidharma – founder of Chàn – courtesy of Buddha Tooth Relic Temple [Singapore] and Wikimedia Commons.)

Our Worst Nightmare

This week I learned two things:

1. that something called "the Buddha-like mindset" is trending among young people in China and Japan, and
2. it's largely condemned

The phrase "Buddha-like mindset" – or Chinese and Japanese phrases so translated – refers to a tendency among those nations' youth to eschew lifestyles dedicated to amassing status symbols and winning the approval of others. It dovetails with a new tiger-free parental attitude that Simon Fraser anthro prof Jie Yang sums up as "there are not that many kids who will really amount to much, so why give them an exhausting childhood?"

Instead, these mostly male kids are said to grow up shiftless and solipsistic, never making it in the work world, devoting their lives instead to their hobbies, pets, and interests.

Most alarming to cultural gatekeepers, they're also swearing off women. Insofar as courtship is the most grueling of society's approval rackets, these young-to-middle-aged men buy back their sovereignty and peace of spirit by simply Bartlebying that mofo.

All of which is a precise description of me. Or has become, any road.

Of course, as Wikipedia points out, "Although it is inspired by the Buddhist guidance to become satisfied through giving up anything tied to avarice, it is not a Buddhist principle." It is, however, predicated on conventional Zen teaching. To wit, as another source in the WP article puts it: "It's OK to have, and it's OK not to have; no competition, no fight, no winning or losing."

But in fact, in a twist partly reminiscent of Western "lifestyle Buddhism", few adherents actually follow Buddha-like mindset into any spiritual practice. (China's Communist ruling class is turning back flips over it all the same, officially for ideological reasons, but more likely for political and economic ones.)

And really, in the end, it's not surprising that the lions of these Asian societies are greeting this improbable teenage fad with consternation.

Just imagine the atomic tantrums we'd pitch in the Christian West if our kids suddenly started emulating Christ.

While simultaneously rejecting the authority of the Church.

I dare to venture this would be the single worst nightmare we've ever faced.

(Photo courtesy of Ian Stauffer and Unsplash.com)

Source Buddhism

I've been rereading The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, the succinct little Thich Nhat Hanh book that amounts, so far as I'm concerned, to our Bible.

Non-Buddhists may be astonished to learn we lack one of those. Instead, we maintain a libraryful of sutras – pamphlet-sized documents that more or less quote the Buddha – along with three or four additional libraries of epistolary commentary. And we Zenners tend to bust even that down to the Heart Sutra (a short summary of the Buddha's insights), four koan anthologies, and, in Soto, Dogen's Shobogenzo. (Other schools swap that last out for their own founders' teachings.)

But for my money, Heart satisfies the hunger for a source of record, something to tell us in no uncertain terms what we're supposed to be doing here. Heart was the book that made me a monk, and the one I return to in moments of despair and confusion. And it never lets me down, though each time I find I've never read it before.

Among insights gained this time is TNH's reference to "Source Buddhism", one of three streams he sorts modern Buddhism into, by way of understanding the differing perspectives. The other two are Many-Schools Buddhism, notable for its didactic nature, and the Mahayana, which emphasises the responsibility of practitioners to their species and world (the famous "bodhisattva principle").

And though my own tradition – Zen – sits squarely in that last camp, I find I'm a bit of a Sourcer.

Quite a Sourcer, really.

Source Buddhists insist on the primacy of the Buddha's teaching over all other authorities. What he said, is Buddhism. Anything else… might not be.

I think this is an important fixation, because humans compulsively pile everything they like under the rubrics they've already adopted. If they're pacifists, they define even their most bellicose conduct as perfect pacifism. If they're conservatives, each innovation they make becomes the soul of conservatism. If they're feminists, their every impulse reflects pure disgust for sexism – highest of all, their purely sexist ones.

Nowhere is this fatal flaw more evident than in religion.

And in no religion is it more evident than in Zen.

So it's comforting to know that in my instinctive sourcery, I'm paddling an Original Stream – perhaps the original stream – of Buddhism.

Because the path of the Buddha isn't always the smoothest, but I do believe it's the most effectual.

And in case you're wondering: yes. My own meandering improvisations thereupon do constitute "original Buddhic teaching".

Seriously; have you ever met a human?


(Photo of the 6th century Teaching Buddha in Ajanta Cave 16 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Zen At War... With Itself

'Way back in March of 2012 CE (how strange to have such a deep vault) I reviewed Zen at War, Brian Daizen Victoria's exposé of Japanese Buddhism during the Second World War.

And now, these many years gone, while looking up the book's Amazon link for a friend, I happen to glance at the reader reviews.

Some of them are disheartening.

While most commenters shared thoughtful, supportive responses, I rate it worthwhile to meet two others, not by way of defending Daizen's work – it's self-defending – but to survey some dangerous internal trends in our incipient Western religion. Especially here, where our grasp of Buddhist history (and our own) is tenuous.

First to catch my eye was a one-star rating entitled "Very disappointing":

This guy [Daizen] must have a terrible background, probably tried to escape all that trauma by moving to far east and becoming Buddhist etc., the classic story. It's ok as long as one does not try and contaminate beautiful Zen with a messed up mind. Avoid this book especially if you're a new Zen learner as it will ruin the whole experience for you.

There's something simultaneously amusing and infuriating about a self-professed Zenner who has no idea what a human being is. While I assume First Honoured Sangha is a sojourner, I've also met so-called "masters" who lack any greater insight.

So to protect any fragile new Zen learners who may stumble upon such spluttering, Ima lay down some tough-dharma. (Ten thousand apologies, pro forma trigger warning, how's your father.)

1. First Honoured Sangha has no calling to judge others or analyse their lives, or to declare their fate foregone. (Gotama; Dogen; Jesus.)

2. First Honoured Sangha knows nothing about Daizen's "classic story". We all have classic stories. Even First Honoured Sangha. (Gotama; Claude Anshin Thomas.)

3. First Honoured Sangha has no authority to give permission, or withhold it. (Gotama; Jesus.)

4. First Honoured Sangha has not been asked to guard the supposed "honour" of Zen. Zen is clean by its nature. Others soil it. (Bodhidharma.)

5. If First Honoured Sangha can't put down the burden of piety, then First Honoured Sangha can haul his or her prodigal backside back to the Church. If we must speak of contaminating Zen, piety is certainly the ultimate pollution. Mindless fear and shame are what authentic Zenners strive to overcome.

In an oddly similar vein, consider this (ostensibly favourable, five-star) review:

The shock value is not so great, as I've been aware of the basic contents for sometime. Japan is an island and the Japanese are an insular people. The emphasis in their culture is group conformity. Zen is not the transformer of personality as it was once marketed, and it should not surprise us to learn that Zen leaders in Japan followed the lead of the Japanese government and Army into widespread war.

The endemic racism and ethnocentrism of Western Zenners never ceases to dumbfound me. It's not just that we dissuade those of African or Hispanic or Arabic origin from joining us; we even freeze out Asians! With the exception of a dwindling handful of deified Asia-born teachers, you see damn few Asian faces in Western Zen centres.

Seriously, brothers and sisters. We have a problem.

One that won't go away until we drive it bodily from the zendo and kill it with ferocious blows from our monk sticks.

Apart from the sort of blanket condemnation First Honoured Sangha called down on another entire vaguely-defined demographic, Second Honoured Sangha neatly excuses Westerners from suffering any angst over Daizen's thesis. The demon, we're assured, isn't the Sangha; it's the Japanese.

With respect, Second Honoured Sangha is mistaken.

The demon is the Sangha. All of us. Then and now. There and here. Present and future.

You and me.

Nor am I alone in my discomfort with the unBuddhic habit of associating practice with submission to dictatorial authority – and then absolving ourselves of the evil we do under it. Thus, Third Honoured Sangha:

What I don't like, is the way it is almost impossible to discuss [enthusiastic Buddhist participation in Japanese fascism] in the Zendo, and I've tried.

Word.

And a final Fourth:

As a Buddhist, it was a reminder that we must be ever looking at our own practice. Do read this book.

Zen is important. We must resist the urge to turn it into a church.


(Photo courtesy of Serg Childed and Wikimedia Commons)