Some months ago I had a refreshing conversation on Zen ethics with a fellow hermit on Mastodon. We're equally sceptical of quietism – the religious posture by which forms are judged sufficient to practice and action anathema – and our discussion helped me clarify some of my own thoughts on a matter that's critically pressing.
The quietist temptation pervades contemplative religions: this notion that real Zenners sit serenely with a satisfied smirk on their faces while injustice gallops unchallenged and others suffer.
It's easy to mistake that for dharma.
Quietism is the opposite of theological activism: the idea that true practice means doing good outside in the Red Dust World. Western Zenners most commonly encounter its ad absurdum form in those Christians who are called to sing, exhort, and engage in public "praise" (an archaic word for advertising) by way of filibustering hesitant believers and driving converts to the fold, where they too will presumably join in such questionable practice.
We non-Christians and former Christians tend to lean hard on this demographic when the topic of activism comes up, since this sort of exercise is easily criticised. But let us note also the Christians who care for the poor and imprisoned; assist the stranger and the foreigner; educate the illiterate; raise the downtrodden; and actively enhance the levels of hope and opportunity in their community.
A rare few publicly oppose deliberate evil, often at significant personal risk, while others – Quakers, for example – go so far as to confront passive evil. While a minuscule fraction of the whole, these last still trounce the percentage of Buddhists doing it.
Which brings me back to the exchange with my brother. We began on common ground, agreeing that the popular Zen position that practice excuses us from protest is erroneous. That, said I, is an illogical conclusion; ethical people act, and as I've written before, if practice doesn't result in an ethical person, there's no need of it. (I, for example, am already a fully-transmitted Self-Absorbed Jackass. No need for cushions, candles, or things that go ding to attain that.)
In the end, my brother summed up this entire meditation in words he'd come to several years ago:
"If you don't sometimes sit down and shut up, you'll never be enlightened.
"If you don't sometimes stand up and shout, there's no reason to be enlightened."
He also offered an alternative phrasing (another translation, what) that I call "the Rinzai version":
"If you never get your ass on the cushion, you can never become enlightened.
"If you never get your ass off the cushion, there is no point to becoming enlightened."
Regular readers will comprehend which of these I'm most given to.
(Photograph of police arresting a Buddhist sitting lotus during the Clayoquot Sound protests courtesy of Aldo de Moor and Wikimedia Commons.)
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.
Though it's generally unknown to Western Buddhists, Russia is one of the formative homelands of our religion. Not only has Buddhism been practiced there for as long as many another Asian nation – for example, the Volga republic of Kalmykia is the only region of Europe to have a historical Buddhist majority – Russia also hosts today what is likely the most fervent and productive conversion movement in the Eurosphere (i.e., nations with white majorities).
I was reminded of this while, for the first time in years, rewatching the above video. I originally encountered this song via primeval Internet radio, and it first appeared on Rusty Ring away back in January 2011, at the bottom of my third-ever post. (Those earliest articles sometimes ended with a premium, called the Cereal Box Prize. When, inevitably, finding and formatting this treat began to eat appalling amounts of blogging time, I abandoned that quirk, though not without regret.)
But having listened to Не могу оторвать глаз от тебя again (and remarveled at that awesome video), I figure it's due for a 14-year bump.
Аквариум (Aquarium) are a seminal Russian pop group, with roots deep in the perilous (for rock musicians) Soviet era. Today they're one of a handful of contemporaries routinely compared to the Beatles. Although founder Boris Grebenshchikov's precise religious convictions remain elusive, he's published multiple translations of Buddhist and Hindu texts and has a long history of including consequent themes in his music.
Just what (or whom) he is singing to here is a bit enigmatic. That chanting refrain suggests your standard love poem; you know, to another human. But the moiling mysticism of those verses opposes that hypothesis.
Still, his repeated second-person appeal at least seems to rule out a Buddhist theme; the author is clearly addressing an interlocutor he can see and calls "you". Our religion generally, though not categorically, refuses to speculate on such things.
The Eastern church, meanwhile – Russia's majority faith – has spoken of and to God in tones very like these for two thousand years.
So there it is: the song is Christian.
But what about that video? Seriously, fellow Buddhists, what about that awesome video? That's not just patently Buddhist, that's outright Zen.
Bodhidharma if ever I saw him.
So maybe "you" is enlightenment. Or the Path. Or the Great Matter. Or Kanzeon. Or some other glib Buddhist euphemism for God.
I don't know.
(See what I did there?)
Anyway, it's in front of you. Watch it. Hear it. See if it doesn't key your bodhisattva nature as hard as it does mine.
The video is of slightly – if very – higher quality than the one shared all those years ago. I was unable to find better, even on our Currently Superior Internet. But no trouble; it still works.
More irksome is the lack of reliable English interpretation. I can grasp the thrust of these lyrics, but my Russian is not up to translating them, at least not accurately. But I can tell that the translation supplied here is a little better than several others I found, by a slim margin.
I'd bet all were generated by artificial ignorance. Buy human, folks.
But for the moment, it seems our only recourse is to accept the best of them, however flawed. Just bridge the gaps with your koanic intelligence.
"I have learned silence from the talkative,
toleration from the intolerant,
and kindness from the unkind;
yet, strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers."
Attributed to St. Stephen, in honour of this his feast, 2024.
(Page from a mediævel manuscript on the martyrdom of St. Stephen courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum and Rawpixel.com.)
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.
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.)
There’s always a very inconsiderable minority of these non-joiners. [...] But you will find that insecure societies are the most intolerant of those who are non-joiners. They are so unsure of the validity of their game rules that they say everyone must play. Now that’s a double-bind. You can’t say to a person you must play because what you’re saying is – you are required to do something which will be acceptable only if you do it voluntarily.
Alan Watts
Long ago I happened upon this teaching from Alan Watts – an Anglican priest, founding figure of Western Zen, and arguable Zen hermit – for whom I have attested admiration. He was specifically addressing the predicament of Buddhist hermits, but as was his habit, more basically referring to the universal status of free-range monks of all paths. Virtually all religions have them, though some meet us with greater grace than others. (I've been told that Zoroastrians, alone among major religions, have no hermits, but I might not believe it. It's possible they "have no hermits" in the same sense as Western Zen.)
Over the years I've returned to Watts' meditation on hermits and the Institution, and found it validating and insightful. Since fellow hermits and the hermit-curious rest here occasionally, I thought to spread the wealth.
Palladius said, "One day when I was suffering from boredom I went to Abba Macarius and said, 'What shall I do? My thoughts afflict me, saying, "You are not making any progress, go away from here".' He said to me, 'Tell them, "For Christ's sake, I am guarding the walls"'."
The Paradise of the Desert Fathers
(Pictured: the Bodhi Tree, the huge old bigleaf [Acer grandiflora] I guarded while sitting my 100 Days on the Mountain.)
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>
It's Gary Snyder's 1969 bid to raise Smokey Bear to vajra status. A contemporary of Jack Kerouac, Snyder was an early American adopter of Zen – such as it existed in Western Buddhism's hippy phase.
Buddhism was popular among freethinking Westerners at the time, in part because it was (and is) viewed as territory ripe for conquest. As a religion with little cultural hegemony, local converts could make it advocate any bohemian thing they wanted. (This stands in contrast to Christianity, which has high cultural hegemony, and is therefore press-ganged into conservative crusades.)
Case in point: environmentalism, still a bedrock value of our Zen, though largely absent from the Asian sort. (Zen has well-established cultural hegemony there, and is consequently a conservative sandbox. See how that works?)
As it happens, Snyder wrote his neo-sutra to serve as Buddhism's contribution to the first Earth Day. What's most interesting to me is that he took Acala-vidyārāja – called Fudo Myōō in Japan, and patron of my practice – as his model, apparently because that figure is often depicted engulfed in flames. Snyder even flat-out appropriated Acala's mantra (namaḥ samanta vajrānāṃ caṇḍa-mahāroṣaṇa sphoṭaya hūṃ traṭ hāṃ māṃ), albeit with some creative transliteration.
Not that Fudo, or Smokey for that matter, probably cares.
Anyway, the text, and the comments Snyder made about it almost 50 years later, are worthwhile. They definitely capture that era, with its (sometimes cloying) earnestness, but mostly, the hope and determination that briefly motivated a generation.
(Photo courtesy of [the US] National Agricultural Library and Wikimedia Commons.)
"One of the monks, called Serapion, sold his book of the Gospels and gave the money to those who were hungry, saying:
'I have sold the book which told me to sell all I had and give to the poor.'"
From the Tales of the Desert Fathers, recounted by Fr. Thomas Merton OCSO in The Wisdom of the Desert.
(Photo of a page from a 4th century book of the Gospels, handwritten in Coptic on papyrus – perhaps the very book Abba Serapion sold that day – courtesy of the Chester Beatty Library, the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, and Wikimedia Commons.)
A few years ago I read a Brad Warner post about getting others into Zen. Brad was typically circumspect on the notion, but he did admit to having attempted it from time to time. Which rendered me thoughtful.
I've never wanted to do that.
That's partly why my blog is simultaneously so prickly and largely devoid of any basic information about Zen. Aside from the fact that most of the text here is addressed to me, I've always imagined that what supplementary audience remain are fellow seekers, either already practicing Zen, or at least otherwise self-motivated to read it.
Any outreach I picture for Rusty Ring is limited to comforting members of my own sparse and scattered tribe, and giving open-minded others a balancing perspective on Zen convention. Thus my readers are generally friends and companions from the first visit, and nobody in need of or open to conversion.
This turns out a practical editorial as well as spiritual policy, since in the past 12 years exactly one werewolf has honoured my comments section with his or her gory theatrics. I've sometimes been savaged off-site – when I've participated in any Zen discussions there, which is rare – but at risk of a jinx, that one troll, several years back, is the only one I've seen.
It's just that, if you aren't selling anything, you don't attract much attention.
Now, if I hung out a shingle proclaiming COME HERE FOR ENLIGHTENMENT, or I CAN SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS, I'd be all up in readership. And, if I monetised, money.
And then my threads would totally be stuffed with people foaming at the mouth, rabid to debunk me. Which would lead to more publicity. Which would bring more readers. Which would score me more money.
What it wouldn't bring any of, is enlightenment. Not for me, not for my followers, not for the world at large.
This suspicion of apologetics is why Zen frowns on evangelism. Because the Christians have it wrong; you can't force salvation on others. You can't talk them into it, trick them into it, shame them into it, or even just sincerely hand it to them.
They won't take it.
The best – and I mean the rare and absolute best – that evangelism can accomplish is to cash in on the weak and desperate, those sentient beings so damaged and disoriented that they can't tell the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit.
I took the Zen path because I had to. World weariness had rendered my life unliveable, and it was this or jump off a chair. So I went looking for a practice.
Not a treatment. A task.
Nobody had to doorbell me or buttonhole me or altar-call me. I've endured all of that before. (Fortunately I'm of a nature to appraise rather than believe.)
Unless you come to enlightenment practice on your own road, for your own reasons, under your own steam, you can't pull it off. Instead you'll be recruited, distracted, and used up by unenlightened others.
That's why our monasteries make you kick down the door to get in. And why I write an underground blog that prospective readers must expend effort to find, and why I'm delighted to talk with interested parties about Zen, but usually end up advising them to stay on their existing path, unless getting off this Ferris wheel – which is the point of Zen practice – is all they want to do.
'Cos otherwise you're wasting your time and Zen's.
And both of those things are too important to toy with.
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)
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.)
We in Christian-majority countries are whelmed this time of year in the Nativity. That is, the legend of Christ's birth, with attendant prophetic prognostics. Public emphasis is on the divinity of a baby conceived without sin – functionally, without sex. I could rant about that a bit, but right now another detail preoccupies me.
Namely, why wasn't Mother Mary killed?
Because that's what should have happened. As bluenoses still petulantly carp, past generations, in their presumed moral superiority, hated nothing so much as unkosher sex. And young Mary – about 15 at the time – had only just married the much older Joseph when she came up heavy.
We know from elsewhere in the Gospels that termination of the marriage contract was the least of potential results. Others included execution by having small rocks hurled at you until you died.
By decent good-standing members of the Church, of course.
Under duly-enacted law of a theocratic state.
In short, this act of "restitution" wasn't simply tolerated, it was ordained. In fact, holy.
But that's not what happened, and the solution to this mystery is found in the Shadow Gospel. Turns out, Joseph was a Jew.
Not a respectable Jew.
Not a Biblical Jew.
An actual Jew.
(Frankly, now I think of it, it's a wonder they didn't kill him as well.)
Says Matthew:
…Joseph [Mary's] husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.
It goes by fast; did you catch it? Joseph wasn't religious. He was righteous. And in this case, that meant turning his back on human authority and putting moralism – and indeed, the law – aside. Rather than stalking back to his new wife's hometown and thrusting Mary back into the arms of her parents with loud and public remonstrations, destroying her life and theirs – again, his legal and ethical duty – Joseph decides to protect her from the legal and the ethical.
Exactly what Joseph's long game was is a bit hazy, but at this point God dispatches an HR guy to handle the predicament:
But while [Joseph] thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
Again, Scripture is vague on exactly how God and his Angels prevented the rest of the Hebrew nation from killing them both, but since childhood, the Nativity paradox has fascinated me: it's facilitated by a deliberate rejection of received morality. As my religious education grew broader, so did my grasp of the import of Joseph's decision, and the risk he incurred.
So this Christmas – a time of opening hearts and auditing egos – I suggest we every one, Christian and less so, meditate on the koan of dogma and Dharma.
Because I suspect it's essential to the difference between what we are and what we're not.
(Photo of Joseph and Mary in private conference courtesy of Tomas Castelazo and Wikimedia Commons.)
A few days ago I saw a humorous meme involving Ouija boards on a Facebook group for members of the church I grew up in. The fact that I still have respect for Christianity is entirely down to the religious training I received there, which was deep and reflective, and continues to be an asset to my Zen practice.
But we had a couple of "those" Christians, too.
So it was that the thread underneath contained a few protests and dire warnings about EVIL! and SATAN! and THE OCCULT!!! (They caution writers not to use caps lock and multiple punctuation, but it's dishonest not to when expressing the opinions of those who think in them.)
And this got me mulling the difference between real and fake religion.
In a real religion, you're the idiot in the room. Fake religion confers special knowledge, even superpowers, such as the ability to speak in tongues or handle snakes or see auras. Or even to sit in one position for hours, disregard pain, cure bodily ailments, and look into the souls of others.
In contrast, after practicing real religion you know less than you did before. Stuff you've always hated, you're not so sure about. Uncorroborated beliefs, you're less willing to shoulder. Facile explanations, shallow documentation, scriptural lawyerball, saints and saviours, you eschew. Answers at all become suspect.
You become dumb. The world is big, and you're not. You've spent your life flailing in a dark room, your sword helicoptering overhead like everyone else's, and now you just sit down and wait for reliable intel.
That's what happened to me. After a week of zazen, I knew nothing. Because I'd never known anything. My conversion experience left me small, as small as everyone else. And now I can't unsee our identical smallness.
Blessed with a church that prizes spiritual penetration, and a family that meets rubbish with corrosive sarcasm, I never believed any nonsense about parlour games and witches and backward rock music. But these days I'm considering the larger issue.
A true faith practice isn't about becoming an expert in special dimensions or states of consciousness or planes of existence that the uninitiated can't see or understand. We have teachings about that sort of thing in Buddhism, too, and my take on them is a convicted "whatever". Because I won't be distracted by trivia.
And that's the difference.
In fake religion, you strive to fill your mind with as much crap as possible. Those with the most crap, are the most accomplished.
In real religion, you strive to empty your mind of crap.
And the true disciples are those still shoveling.
(Photo of the Sword of Righteousness courtesy of Anthony Appleyard and Wikipedia Commons.)
that something called "the Buddha-like mindset" is trending among young people in China and Japan, and
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.
Some months ago I had a refreshing conversation on Zen ethics with a fellow hermit on Mastodon. We're equally sceptical of quietism – the religious posture by which forms are judged sufficient to practice and action anathema – and our discussion helped me clarify some of my own thoughts on a matter that's critically pressing.
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