'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)
In Auntie's War: The BBC during the Second World War, Edward Stourton drops a bombshell.
He's talking about how radio – the original electronic medium – transformed Prime Minister Winston Churchill from a simple politician to a national fetish by bringing him into the sitting room of every British family. Hence all who are old enough can tell you exactly where they were when they heard him transmit these timeless words:
…we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
So indelible was this rallying cry that in Way Back Home – his 2015 anthem to his wartime childhood – Rod Stewart included a clip of this gravelly, defiant BBC broadcast.
That never happened.
It's not unusual for people to remember things wrong. "Play it again, Sam", "I am your father, Luke", "Elementary, my dear Watson!" "Beam me up, Scotty," and enough ersatz Mark Twain quotations to double his shelf, have all entered our collective knowledge. Or properly spoke, belief.
But this case isn't just a few transposed words. An entire nation has literally hallucinated a seminal event, complete with deep affective context and a whole range of sensory cues.
I'm not old enough to remember (or misremember) this broadcast, but reading Stourton's documentation of its nonexistence, I was absolutely floored. I grew up hearing that speech! Old people wouldn't shut up about it! I've entertained/annoyed others with my impression of that Churchill broadcast since high school!
But as it happens, Churchill only ever read out this text in Commons. It was reprinted in the papers next day, and doubtless some BBC presenters quoted it in their segments. But the PM, yea though he frequently addressed his people over the national service, only spoke these particular words into a microphone in 1949, when he was asked to cut the recording we incessantly hear in historical documentaries.
This is just the latest – if most dramatic – instance of the Winston Churchill Effect that I've encountered. Another is the pretty hippy girls who spat on returning Vietnam vets in the 60s and 70s. Many of us remember reading about this in the papers, or seeing it on TV. And in his excellent, highly-recommended autobiography, hermit monk Claude AnShin Thomas relates in some detail the time it happened to him personally.
Except it didn't.
This urban legend is a little easier to bust, given the logistics such an assault would demand. The attacker would have to gain access to a military airbase; loiter around the terminal unnoticed for hours; divine who in the crowd was a returning combat veteran; then approach very near said young man without attracting any attention, even from the target.
All while harbouring jarringly unhippy convictions.
These inconsistencies have bothered me since I was a kid, but I was still dumbfounded to learn no such event has ever been confirmed. Ever. Anywhere.
To be clear, I don't believe AnShin is lying. Rather, he's as certain of this memory as I am that at age 11 I read a front-page story in the local newspaper about a kid – named Richard, wearing a striped collared shirt in the photo – dying from heroin-injected Hallowe'en candy. He gobbed a treat upon returning home, then fell sick. His parents sent him to bed, but when he got worse they rushed him to the hospital, where doctors, little suspecting the cause of his condition, were unable to save him. Later, the candy wrapper was found to be pierced by a hypodermic needle.
You're probably already there. No such crime has ever been reported.
Ever.
Anywhere.
This disturbing bug in our OS has serious implications for our survival. It also vindicates the fundamental tenet of Zen: "don't-know mind". This is the state Zenners cultivate, to the best of our ability, because those opinions we call "facts" are very contingent, and much – perhaps most – of what we remember is inconsistent and imprecise.
And every so often, complete rubbish.
In the state of don't-know mind, we remain open to further data. In this position we stop sorting input into yes, no, and maybe, and just catalogue it. Because the need to respond ethically to external stimuli arises far less often than we think. And "making up your mind" about the rest amounts to shutting off your intelligence.
By not becoming attached to discrete data, we avoid the hysterical blindness it engenders. And, with a little luck and continuing sincere practice, the insanity that leads to.
As for Churchill, he'd get another shot at posterity, as the peroration of his famous Battle of Britain speech would soon be cast in bronze:
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'
And this time he really did broadcast it, having first received tremendous acclaim in Parliament. Prevailed upon that evening, he re-read his masterful "finest hour" speech, against his will, pouting and mumbling, from the BBC desk.
At 10PM.
To very few listeners.
And critics who universally panned the whole transmission as lacklustre and forgettable in the next day's papers.
Nevertheless, a great majority of British subjects would forever recall how their hearts quickened and their spines stiffened to Churchill's electric performance, as they listened to him that afternoon.
Or after dinner.
There's some disagreement on that point.
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)
Some time ago I surfed into What You Need to Know about Mindfulness Meditation, an article made available to military personnel (and everybody else) by the US Department of Defense. It leaves me a little conflicted.
As far as the information it contains is concerned, there's little enough to carp about. Yeah, dhyana probably didn't start with the Buddha, but that's minor and arguable. And the whole thing has a pronounced "meditate to get stuff" bias, but let's be honest: much in the Buddhist press does as well. And we all first come to Zen to get stuff, though the delusion softens if we practice properly.
And that's what disturbs me about this piece. Because the fact is, if you're truly practicing Zen, it's going to get progressively harder to be a soldier. Right wing politics, nationalism, certainty, fear of authority – to say nothing of killing strangers in their own homes – are things it's difficult to convince Zenners to embrace.
Which leads me to wonder what exactly the DoD is selling.
The argument cœnobites perennially throw at eremitics such as myself is that Zen needs patrolling – that without ordained, presumably accountable leadership, anybody can sell anything as Zen. And that, we're told, leads to charlatans who mislead others, individuals who mislead themselves, and the general obfuscation of the Zen path through the Red Dust World.
None of which I dispute. Rather, I question the contention that ordination eliminates these pitfalls, that the Buddha ordained any authority but his own, or that anyone has a patent on enlightenment practice. (A conviction well-buttressed by my experience of those who claim one.)
But I gotta say it, this DoD article gives off a definite whiff of caveat emptor.
It's not that anything it says is wrong. It's just that I misdoubt its motives.
Which is also how I feel about Zen teachers.
I'm certainly not opposed to Zen practice in the military. To begin with, that profession destroys just about everyone it touches – at least when fully exercised – and that creates a howling need for clear-seeing and moral autonomy. And carried forward, a Zen-practicing army would soon cease to be one, which is the next step in our evolution.
But that's what bothers me. Because this writer never openly suggests just what the war industry's aims might be in promoting mindfulness. Probably not reasoned insubordination, I'll wager. Where secular authorities advocate meditation, it's virtually always about making individuals docile, so they'll continue to commit or tolerate acts Bodhidharma (a war veteran) would condemn.
One would like to believe that any attempt to harness Zen to such ends would backfire – that the practice itself would free practitioners from quack intent. Sadly, religion has never worked that way. Zen has been weaponised before, with karmic results that outstripped its epically-appalling historical ones, and it's currently being turned to similar ends in business, education, and corrections as well.
As a one-time convicted Christian, the fear that my current path will become as debased as the former is very real. This practice is vital; too vital to allow careerists to usurp its brand. That road leads to the utter annihilation of Zen, as it has other religions.
And the last thing we need around here is yet another cargo cult.
I hope military personnel, active and discharged, around the world learn about Zen; that those who are suffering know that it might keep them breathing; and that those who are in pain will give it an honest shot and see if it helps. Some of our best teachers came from that world, channelling the laser insight they scored waging war – and the iron discipline their instructors gave them – into kick-ass monasticism. (The two callings are remarkably similar.)
Because it's not that there's nothing soldierly about the mindfulness path. It's just that it leads to a diametrically opposite destination.
(Photo of the Ryozen Kannon, Japan's WWII memorial, courtesy of Bryan Ledgard and Wikimedia Commons.)
"When I talk I am telling my story and also the collective story."
Claude Anshin Thomas
(Photo of the original Zen blog courtesy of Immanuel Giel and Wikimedia Commons.)
"There is no escape from the nature of your suffering in this practice. When you walk, you are constantly confronted with your self, your attachments, your resistance. You are confronted with what you cling to for the illusion of security."
Claude AnShin Thomas
(Photo courtesy of Leah Love and Wikimedia Commons.)
This week I'm seconding a motion by The Oatmeal's Matthew Inman to see Columbus Day repurposed as Bartolomé de las Casas Day. Las Casas, originally a conquistador, repented of his horrific sins, became a Dominican friar, and evangelised Mesoamerican First Nations during the period of contact. Unfortunately for Power, he turned out to be a Christian Claude Anshin Thomas, decrying the mind-numbing brutality and utter lack of respect for human life that characterised the European invasion of the Americas. Worse yet he documented them, first in Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (also available in English) and then the more comprehensive Historia de Las Indias.
In the sordid history of colonialism, Las Casas stands out as one of the few Christians who practiced what he preached. (Literally.) He's a favourite of mine because he experienced (and again, documented) personal spiritual growth over his lifetime; convictions he adopted early on – such as supporting the African slave trade by way of avoiding the enslavement of his own flock – he soundly and publicly rejected after further meditation. I've found that this capacity to delve and change, even if it means admitting transgression, is the highest morality, and those who practice it are the most trustworthy of people.
Rather than repeat Matthew's case here, I'll just link to his own excellent and highly readable proposition. As a history nerd I can tell you that his characterisations of Christopher Columbus, the other conquistadores, and the good friar himself are historically accurate, as is his description of how Columbus Day became a thing in the United States and many Latin American countries. (Thanksgiving immunised us against it in Canada; one of the things I give thanks for on this day.)
Therefore, in emulation of Seattle and Minneapolis (though I don't much care for "Indigenous Peoples Day"; Las Casas Day is short, inclusive, and to the point), I encourage all jurisdictions to convert this holiday into a tribute to the courage and conviction of a man who stood against the tide and practiced his true religion in the face of overwhelming opposition.
May we follow in his footsteps.
(Photo of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, by Felix Parra, courtesy of Alejandro Linares Garcia and the Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City.)
I'm not sure he'd appreciate the label, but Claude AnShin Thomas is the most prominent hermit of our generation. Though an ordained priest in Bernie Glassman's Zen Peacemaker lineage, his practice is in the tradition of Bashō. In his own words:
"I made the decision to take the vows of a mendicant monk primarily because I wanted to live more directly as the Buddha had. […] Also, in witnessing the evolution of Zen Buddhist orders in the United States, I wanted to evoke the more ancient traditions of those who embarked on this spiritual path and to live my commitment more visibly."
AnShin specialises in walking ango – long voyages on foot, without money, living off the Dharma and the compassion of others. He calls them peace pilgrimages, and to date he's walked from Auschwitz to Vietnam; across the US and Europe; in Latin America; and even the Middle East. He also leads street retreats, a unique Peacemaker practice wherein Zen students take the Buddha at his word and become Homeless Brothers in the urban core of a large city for a specified period of time.
Where, you wonder, does a guy get gravel like that? Well…
In At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace, AnShin describes his military service in Vietnam, where he clocked 625 combat hours in US Army helicopters, many behind an M60 machine gun. By his own recollection, he was in combat virtually every day from September 1966 to November 1967. He was, in short, the classic "badass American fighting man" so beloved of Hollywood.
Except it wasn't as fun.
He came home, like all war veterans, to a society desperate never to hear about those not-fun parts, or to pay for the care he now required for life. The tale that ensues has been told a hundred times, and each time is the first.
Re-reading At Hell's Gate (one of my all-time favourite Zen books) I was struck again by the sense that the author would rather not be writing it at all. There's a reticence in AnShin's prose, a tone of compelled confession, that suggests modesty, circumspection, and discomfort with the writer's art, at which he clearly doesn't feel proficient. Which is exactly why he is. You're not reading a writer; you're reading a veteran, in much more than just the military sense.
Interspersed among terse, almost telegraphic accounts of his past is some of the best how-to on practical meditation I've found. His themes are universally relevant: depression and despair; atonement and redemption; suffering and transcendence. All from a guy who speaks with thunderous authority.
His eremitical bona fides are equally evident. He writes:
"Anyone can come with me on a pilgrimage. It's not necessary for a person to become a student of mine or to spend time with me to learn this practice. It is open."
In these angos – which he defines as "just walking" – he's revived a practice largely abandoned in the era of institutional Zen:
"There is no escape from the nature of your suffering in this practice. When you walk, you are constantly confronted with your self, your attachments, your resistance. You are confronted with what you cling to for the illusion of security."
Should anyone require more evidence of AnShin's hermitude, his Further Reading section includes Zen at War, The Cloud of Unknowing (a classic of Christian contemplation), and the Gnostic Gospels, though none of them are cited in the text.
My lone criticism of At Hell's Gate is its light treatment of those incredible pilgrimages. In fact, I wish AnShin would write a whole 'nother book just about them. I appreciate his desire to avoid the odour of self-glorification; first-person journalism is a hard beat for a non-narcissist. And as a mendicant, he likely doesn't have time or space to sit down and write. But it's badly needed. I hope AnShin's sangha convince him someday to transmit and preserve these vital experiences, for the benefit of future generations. After all, where would we be if Bashō had remained silent?
Nevertheless, the book we already have is all by itself a repository of rare and hard-earned wisdom, a chronicle of unusual violence and damage, leading to unusual insight. The man himself puts it best:
"Everyone has their Vietnam. Everyone has their war. May we embark together on a pilgrimage of ending these wars and truly live in peace."
If you're suffering – whether firearms were involved or just plain-old heartbreak – read this book.
But given the way he went, and the fact that August has somehow become Suicide Month here at Rusty Ring, I've got stuff to say.
First off, Robin Williams was a crucial figure to my generation. I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere – not surprising, given that those of us who followed the Baby Boomers have always been studiously ignored. But Robin Williams was, to some extent, our John Lennon. The fact that he was apolitical suited us perfectly; so were we. His lightning genius was dazzling, his sword scalpel-sharp, though he never seemed to over-use it. He took down the officious and precious, but never harped or dwelled. In nearly every photograph a childlike gentleness glows in his eyes. He wasn't angry; he was self-mocking. In him we saw perhaps not ourselves, but what we wished we could be. And on a personal note, as a kid of Scottish descent growing up in the States, I'll be eternally grateful to him for finally convincing the Yanks that Robin IS TOO a boys' name. (Haven't been hassled about that since Mork.)
None of which I realised until he was gone. Sic transit gloria mindfulness practice.
With his passing, my man Robin also brought depression to international attention, resulting in myriad thoughtful, helpful articles about the relationship between creativity, damage, and loneliness. Last week my 2011 review of The Zen Path Through Depression trended worldwide, attracting hundreds of hits. So people are interested in the topic, and with luck some who need counsel are seeking it.
But one thing I haven't seen is any discussion of the collective responsibility for the condition and its consequences. Some time ago I read a study in which researchers assembled a group of depression patients and another of random others. Researchers gave each individual a series of open-ended true stories and asked them to predict the outcome. The depressed subjects consistently augured more accurately than those in the control group.
Get it? Another word for depression is insight. Often, depressed people suffer in part from the misfortune of not being as mentally incapacitated by denial as their cohorts. The implication is clear: at least some of depression isn't sickness at all; it's a tragic lack of sickness, in a world gone barking mad.
Last year I uploaded a piece partly addressing the issue of how to deal with such unfashionable insight, should you be so afflicted; suffice it to say that killing yourself because everyone else is crazy is unskilful, both for yourself and the world. But like Thich Nhat Hanh says: "Those who think they are not responsible are the most responsible." Therefore, today I'm talking especially to the non-depressed majority.
What can you do to reduce the suicide rate?
The standard Zen response is to be mindful of the seeds of violence in yourself and deny them water. Some of the best instruction in this highly effective practice is found in Claude Anshin Thomas's autobiography At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace. In the meantime, here's a short list of possible first steps:
- If you belong to a church or other religious organisation that identifies any group of fellow mortals ("Satanists"; atheists; gays; intellectuals; competing religions) as individuals who must be "stopped"; converted by physical or social violence; or liquidated; leave it.
- If you belong to a political party or movement that ascribes the problems we face to some superficially-defined group of people (immigrants; gays; rich or poor people; criminals; another race; proponents of a political or economic theory; another nation); leave it.
- Boycott anger-tainment – shock jocks, call-in shows, intentionally biased networks, sensationalistic books and movies. Anything that's heavy on analysis and light on facts. Don't forget the red tops, too. The constant public shaming of Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Amy Winehouse (who apparently still isn't dead enough), or whatever other none-of-your-business train-wreck is selling at the moment, dehumanises us more than you think.
- Too ambitious? Ok, just declare peace on somebody. Your choice. Choose one group that annoys the crap out of you and say, "From now on, you have my permission to be or do that." Slow drivers? Fast drivers? Loud children? People who use bad grammar? Obscenities? Residents of big garish houses? Those who dump their shopping trolleys in the car park for someone else to round up? (Ooo, that's mine!)
Note that none of these are solutions to any problem, suicide least of all; rather they're a way to begin clearing the ground so solutions can develop. Maybe now that those self-centred bastards who strew their carts all over the place are no longer prompting a battle response, I will see the cause and effect behind their actions and perceive an end to it. Worst case scenario: I'll stop squandering my finite human energies on unproductive suffering. (Starting with my own.)
Once you start, it becomes addictive, this business of reason, acceptance, and forgiveness.
So go ahead, brothers and sisters: take that first step. See how it goes.
Until next time, honoured reader: Nanu-nanu.
(Still of Robin being human from the Bill Forsythe film of that title.)
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