WW: Battered but not beaten

(I made this fudo [look left; hanging from the bell] in 2009, for friends in Spokane County. When I took care of their farm for a few weeks 6 years later, I posted a photo of it here. It was still looking pretty smart then, all things considered.

On a visit last month I noted that 16 years' continuous duty in the desert hadn't done it any favours. But given the conditions, the old warrior still serves our patron well.)

The Grandfather Paradox

This graphic illustrates the grandfather paradox, a secular koan demonstrating the inability of the human mind to grasp reality.

Alright, it's actually La avo-paradokso, which means "the grandfather paradox" in Esperanto, because it's still July and I'm still licensed to go a bit off the rails. And as we'll see, those rails can be hard to discern, anyway.

For starters, let's acknowledge from the outset that the above premise cannot be tested, because we don't have a tempomaŝino (time machine). But that doesn't stop us using it to challenge our mental faculties.

So, starting at 12 o'clock and proceeding horloĝdirekte (clockwise):

I invent a time machine.
I travel into the past.
I kill my grandfather.
My father isn't born.
I'm not born.
I don't invent a time machine.
I don't travel into the past.
My grandfather is born.
My father is born.
I'm born.
I invent a time machine.
I travel into the past...

You can see that though the proposition is (science-)fictional, the conceptual challenge is real. It's an example of a reality that the human mind can't perceive:

– It's impossible to kill your grandfather, because if you did, you wouldn't exist.
– But you do exist, so if you could go back in time you could totally kill your grandfather.
– Except you couldn't, because if you did, you'd never exist in the first place, so you couldn't kill anybody.
– But you do exist, therefore…

The solution? There isn't one.

Not if you're human.

Because your primitive reason runs on logic, which is why all the Vidyārājas are sniggering at you.

(However, consider that we might come to realise even this concept if we could live it. The human brain has the capacity to pencil out and penetrate circumstances that utterly lack logical sense, if it stands in front of them. I only hope our grandfathers arm themselves well if ever that comes to pass.)

Buddhism has long taught that time is neither linear nor universal; timelines are numberless, each running at its own speed and in its own direction. The variance between the classical reincarnation of Hindu and some Buddhist worldviews, and Zen's messy ad hoc concept of transmigration, originates in this contention.

That's why we developed koans, which are meant to jazz that part of the brain that can't grok the great stretch of reality that lies beyond dualistic perception. ("What was your face before your grandmother was born?" seems an appropriate example.) This also goes a long way toward explaining those wild tales of monastery practice: the decades of mu-pondering, the dharma combat, insight expressed by farting and slapping and barking like a dog. Because extracranial notions exceed language.

You can find an in-depth philosophical exploration of the grandfather paradox, as well as similar thought experiments, at BYJU'S page about it. And while you're there, take a moment to marvel that this page was uploaded by a company that educates children. I've got a feeling India's going to be running this popsicle stand in another generation.

In the meantime, why not just be nice to your grandfather? So maybe you can build your time machine without him, but who decided we needed that more than we need him?

See if you can wrap your choanocytes around that, Spongebob.

Dukkha Koan

"You may not believe in hell, but hell believes in you."

(A message from this station and Fudo Myō-ō.)


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

Koanic Times

Back in 2023 I wrote a post about another post I wrote in 2015 on the topic of forgiveness. As a prime example, I referred to the case of a repentant former Nazi. (Let's be precise: the man had abandoned his dead-end path of his own volition and atoned for his past through public confession and self-condemnation. Such gestures are extremely rare in the judgemental, regardless of their imagined justification for their bigotry, but many in the Internet community chose instead to proceed as if he'd been caught out being an active Nazi by upright citizens who had brought his case to public scrutiny.)

In 2022, person or persons unknown outed my article as "hateful", or at least hate-adjacent, whereupon Google fenced it off from search engine indexing and slapped a locked gate on visitors already possessing the link, requiring a second Google sign-in to read it.

This is effectively a take-down, with the added benefit to the taker-down that the piece wasn't literally taken down, perhaps to puncture potential lawsuits.

The whole experience was Orwell-grade surrealism, but I have more important practice, so I posted my mystifiction over it and moved on.

And now it's happened again.

This situation too involves a Nazi reference, but this time the questionable motivation is Facebook's.

Now in the dock: last week's post, consisting of photographic testimony to Nazi vandalism and a call to arms (or at least a proper Zen hell-no) from Canadian literary lion Félix Leclerc.

Facebook's swift condemnation of my anti-Nazism began the instant I posted the link to its server. Within seconds I was informed that it contained offensive content and so had been removed.

This all happened so fast I suspected malfunction, and reposted.

And seconds later, got zapped again.

Given the speed of the response, it's likely that some artificial stupidity-powered hate detector simply saw the swastika and panicked. The boilerplate notice – identical both times – contained a link to something or someone higher up for reconsideration. I immediately complied, certain this possibly human judge would see without difficulty that:

1. The photo documents a criminal act and couldn't possibly be taken for glorification of Nazis or their ambitions, and:

2. The Leclerc quotation below it reflects both the author's and the poster's combative attitude toward totalitarianism and ideologised narcissism.

The next day I received a response, informing me in the same Hal-esque tones that my monkeyshines would remain barred from the service. It too offered further escalation, though frankly, given that my trust in humanity and its instances was exhausted decades ago, I'm just not that invested in it.

Speculation on the origin of such eerie hostility is pointless; the space in which these ghostly arbitrators spin being so far removed from objective reality as to render any attempt to fathom it a waste of time and effort more productively spent on the cushion.

So at the risk of further discipline, let me make my position on the Nazi issue crystal-clear to anyone who might have been disturbed by last week's meditation:

• Nazis are a thing again, and they can be neither ignored nor placated without sacrificing our integrity.

• The global Zen sangha is therefore called to confront them with greater honesty and courage than we did last time.

Because that brought irredeemable shame upon us.


(Photo of 1878 Japanese painting of Fudo Myō-ō, possibly by Kano, courtesy of the Library of Congress and Rawpixel.com.)

The Smokey Bear Sutra

Recently stumbled over this in the course of a Zen surf:

Smokey Bear Sutra

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.)

Pháp Dung's Timely Teaching

I'm not much of a rock.

As a Zenner I aspire to be unmovable. Fudo Myō-ō, the patron of my practice, has made a career of it. And I often exhort others – principally here – to remain calm, to look deeply before acting, to avoid multiplying suffering by making a bad situation worse.

In the blogosphere, no-one can see your hypocrisy.

The fact is, I have a warrior spirit. I want to horse up and ram a swift lance through as many jerks as I can jab before one of them takes me out. Call it an ethnic weakness, but I am by nature a doer, a get'er'doner, and especially a defender. When arrogant pricks start kicking folk around, my first impulse is to cut them off at the knees.

Literally, if possible.

Which means that recent events have handed the monk I decided to be fourteen years ago a steep challenge. By way of meeting it, I've largely withdrawn into meditation and monastic discipline these last weeks, to sit with my conflicting values. If you were to ask me what honour demands in these times, depending on time of day you'd either hear, "Look deeply, understand, and proceed like a grown-up," or "Behead the mofos."

I'm working on that second thought.

And in that task I've greatly been helped by this Vox interview with Pháp Dung. As a senior student of Thich Nhat Hanh, he's received a great deal of training in mindful activism (a concept that conventional Zen considers oxymoronic, but one that Thich Nhat Hanh founded a lineage upon), as well as holding his ground under fire.

As I've found the student as lucid as the teacher, I pass his teaching on here to brothers and sisters who find themselves in the same dilemma.

I guess anybody can be a Buddhist when it's easy, eh?


(Photo courtesy of Moyan Brenn and Wikimedia Commons.)

Courage Kyôsaku

"To dwell in the three realms is to dwell in a burning house."

Bodhidharma





(Photo of The Blue Fudo – National Treasure of Japan, Heian period [794-1185 CE] – holding his ground in the fires of Hell, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

For Fudo and Dr. Suess(-roshi)

Today I will sit
In this place, unmoving,
Until I have transcended all suffering
Or until my legs begin to hurt
In which case, I will stand
But I will sit while I stand
Then I'll walk about a bit
And sit while I walk
And then sit again
Really, this time
Until I have transcended all suffering

Should suffering hold out until lunchtime
I will sit while I eat
Then I will sit while I vacuum
Later I'll sit while I cook dinner, and then again while I eat
And then while I read
Finally, I will sit while I sleep

If by tomorrow I still have not transcended suffering
I will sit again
I'll sit in the bath, and I'll sit on the path
I'll sit on the grass and I'll sit on my, uh... cushion
I'll sit in the house, the garage, and the yard
I'll sit with the carrots, nasturtiums, and chard
I'll sit in a chair if I'm feeling conservative
I'll sit with a bagel, if it has no preservatives

I'm determined to sit for the rest of my life
In the midst of all happiness, boredom, and strife
I'll sit before dawn and I'll sit 'way past noon
I'll sit in September, December, and June
I'll sit while I sing and I'll sit while I cry
I'll sit in Vancouver, Algiers, and Shanghai
I'll sit while I play and I'll sit while I pray
Don't know if I'll sit while I poop, but I may

See, I'm no longer young, but I'm not just yet old
So I sit to remember and keep off the mould
When at last my bones fail, then I'll sit while I lie
And when my heart follows, I will sit while I die

After that I don't know what will happen
But it'll involve sitting.


(Photo of Thai child monk sculpture courtesy of Tevaprapas Makklay and Wikimedia Commons.)

Kanzeon Meditation

Fictional bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Kuan Yin, Guanyin, Kanzeon, Kannon, Gwan-eum, Quan Âm) incarnates a specific insight about the nature of reality, chopped down to a simplistic platitude in the marketplace. The platitude is "Bodhisattva of Compassion", a role most evident in one of his many avatars: the Virgin Mary. (This primordial figure has both genders, befitting the quality she represents. Unfortunately this is more insight than the average monkey can chamber, so in India he's usually called a man; Western Buddhism, with its Christian influence and largely female direction, almost always cleaves to the East Asian tradition that she's a woman.)

But the original Sanskrit – "Lord Who Looks Down" – is a better description of what this bodhisattva actually does. Avalokiteshvara doesn't intervene on anybody's behalf; she's not a patron saint (actual existence being a prerequisite for that job) or goddess. He just, like, looks down. Why? Because she's a compassionate dude.

The more active face of this universe is something sailors readily perceive, because they have an ongoing relationship with another infinite, unfathomable entity that will happily kill you without a second thought. No, not happily. Indifferently. To have contempt for you, it would have to realise you exist. And it's 'way too busy for that.

But the universe has another nature that's just as important: opportunity. In this infinitely generous life, we can grow, learn, change. Practice. An endless stream of bricks bounces off our skull, but every one of them has a note wrapped around it. Kuan Yin looks down from heaven, sees your suffering, and says, "Come on, crow meat! You're hurting both of us, here. Practice, dammit!"

Because the universe wants you to succeed. It may not be snuggly and cute and sweet-smelling, but every problem here is its own cure. And if it weren't for the pain, we'd never be motivated to reach it.

As one of Fudo's crew, I don't meditate much on Avalokiteshvara. But the new year puts me in mind of her. In this moment, more than others, folks think about the paths they arrived on, and those that lie ahead. Along the way we acquire great weights of resentment, and an equally crushing load of denial. We ignore life's windfalls, and our own role in pumping pain into it. But mostly, we deny the simple opportunity it gives us.

This ain't hell. We can get out of this.

Some time ago the following meditations invented themselves while I was sitting. I return to them from time to time, when the burden grows great. Therefore, in steely Fudoesque anticipation of 2014, I offer them to all seekers, in the hopes they may be of help to other enlightenment practices.

I.

I forgive myself for not being perfect.
I forgive others for not being perfect as well.
I forgive my judges for not knowing the whole truth.
I forgive humanity for containing evil people.

II.

I honour the progress I've made.
I honour the roads of others as well.
I honour those who evolve with courage.
I honour this life for the opportunity to practice.


(Photo of Guanyin Bodhisattva statue courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Southeast Asian Art Collection, and the Walters Art Museum.)

Hermitcraft: Some Eight-Strand Kongo Fudos

Nylon twine cord, malleable washer ring.

Here are a few garden fudos with eight-strand kongo kumihimo cords. (Kongo means "twist" in Japanese; the photos demonstrate why it's called that.)














Kongo is the easiest of all

Mason line, nylon rug-hooking yarn, lotus ring.

kumis, readily done on a homemade card. You'll find a good YouTube tutorial for it here. The demonstrator in the video uses a store-bought foam kumihimo loom, but you can easily make your own from solid (not corrugated) cardboard, as from a cracker box or milk carton. Just cut slits around the edges to hold the strands, and crossed slits in the middle to pull the braid through as it develops.

Eight-strand kongo in fore- ground; 16-strand and 8-strand flat behind.

Eight-strand fudos recall the Eightfold Path. Some of mine also reverse every eight turns, and they do this eight times total; this represents the Eight Worldly Dharmas, the bookended, enlightenment-blocking barriers that Fudo Myō-ō slashes apart with his sword.

Gold mason line, decoy line, red and black rug-hooking yarn.

Eight strands give you almost limitless freedom to experiment, mixing different colours, fibres, sizes, and textures in varying configurations. It's an engaging technique, and an addictive one; the process is a kind of meditation, ending in the joy of having made something beautiful from such mundane materials as seine twine, decoy line, and Red Heart yarn.

Layout disguises the spiral kongo weave of this cord.

Made from acrylic, polyester, or nylon, these fudos can last centuries. I test mine in very harsh conditions. Wearing their worn tassels and bleached colours like okesa, they hold their ground with smug contempt.



All in all, the eight-strand kongo kumihimo garden fudo offers admirable visual impact for moderate effort. The technique is neither complex nor especially time-consuming, and materials can be had for reasonable cost from hardware and craft stores. Just find a nice big ring, and have at it.

Good Song: Won't Back Down

This week I'm posting a video tribute to Fudo, patron bodhisattva of my monastic practice.

I chose John's cover for the sole reason that his voice sounds like Fudo's own to me. (Minus the Scottish accent.) Plus I get a certain adolescent sursum corda from this interpretation. But Tom's original is also great.

So burn on, brother. Here in hell, you lose until you win.

☸

WW: Fudo teeshirt from Thailand

Hermitcraft: Fudos, Pt. 2: Building the 100-Year Fudo

Don't panic.

As Douglas Adams might have said, had he been a hermit, building the hundred-year fudo is a snap for the hoopy frood who knows where his towel is. At base, it's a ring on a string. In theory, any ring, on any string, is a fudo. But the hundred-year design is distinctive enough to look deliberate, simple enough to produce quickly and repeatedly, cheap enough to be universal, and rugged enough to confront time. Hence the name.

The wherewithals:

o A washer to serve as the ring
o Nylon twine (also sold as seine twine or mason line)
o A flame, such as a candle
o Sharp scissors
o Something to hook the washer on while braiding
o Clear fingernail polish (optional)


The procedure:

1. Cut three lengths of twine, 40 inches long.

2. Seal each cut end by holding it over the flame. Be careful not to overheat them or the ends will mushroom and discolour. They might also catch fire. (Fireless method: dip the cut ends in fingernail polish.)

3. Smooth the three strands together and knot the hank four to six inches from one end. Any style knot will do, from simple to fancy, but mind you don't outsize the ring's (washer's) hole. Half-knot is code, if you seal it with fingernail polish. If not, a figure-eight is less likely to pull out.

4. Optional: seal the knot with a liberal coat of fingernail polish. This stuff partially melts the nylon, resulting in a knot that's permanently welded shut.

5. Suspend the ring from the bridle you've made, so that it hangs on the knot, with one strand on one side and two on the other.

6. Hook the ring on something. The photos show an S-hook I made from a coat hanger. It hooks over the edge of a counter or table, to a chair back, on a fence or branch, on my shoelace, sandal strap, or big toe, etc. You can also set a nail in a board or bench, or find some doohickey around the place that already has a hooky bit you can press into service. Just anchor that ring.

7. Tie the single strand around the other two with a half hitch, as shown in the photo above. Tighten it up and straighten out the knot so it will hang straight when you're done. (Keep tension on the strands while passing to the next step, to make sure the knot doesn't pull up or down in the process.)

8. Make a cord of the strands, using a standard 3-strand braid.

9. Knot the cord about six inches short of the strand ends. (Generally you leave the end tassel a little longer than the ring tassel, because it'll need to be trimmed up a bit.)

10. Trim the end tassel so it's the same length as the ring tassel. This step also lets you smooth out any unlaying of the strand ends that has happened during the braiding process. (Common in twisted line.)

11. Reseal the trimmed ends with fire or fingernail polish.

12. Optional: seal the end knot with fingernail polish.

And you're in business. Hang the fudo in a place where you feel at peace, or where you'd like to feel at peace, or where you think others may feel at peace, or where you'd like others to feel at peace. Alternately, give it to someone else, either in comradeship or as encouragement in hard times.

Then make another one. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Hundred-years can also be made of other colours, with non-washer rings, and other numbers of strands. A precise definition doesn't exist, but in general they're small, have one to four strands, and cheap rings, ideally ones that were found or salvaged. Bigger, fancier, or more expensive fudos, and those made of less durable cordage, are still fudos, but they're not hundred-year fudos.

Because you just can't beat that white, three-strand, hundred-year fudo. The glorious foot soldier of Fudo's stone army.

Hope to see yours out in the world one day.

Hermitcraft: Fudos, Part 1

A trio of large fudos await
assignment by the woodstove

Making and hanging fudos is part of my practice. Regulars will have noted photos of them in several posts, as well as the 3-strand, hundred-year model on the masthead. Ever wonder why this blog is called Rusty Ring? Now you know.

Who is Fudo?

Fudo Myō-ō is a bodhisattva, sort of a cross between an angel and a saint. Standard Zen has it that there are real bodhisattvas, human beings who have attained enlightenment and go around helping others, and metaphorical ones, figures who never existed, but embody or symbolise certain spiritual principles. Fudo the Immovable is one of these. His Sanskrit name is Acala Vidyârâja, but I prefer to think of him as the Scottish Bodhisattva. He's that fierce, razor-sharp part of us that Hell can't break.

Fudo Bodhisattva has chained himself to a rock in the deepest pit of Hell, where he vows to stay until all sentient beings have been saved. He holds a sword of steel to cut through delusion and a coil of rope to bind the demons of despair. Fudo will remain on-post, enduring infinite torment, until the last soul makes it out. Then he will turn out the lights, lock the door, and Hell will be out of business.

What is a fudo?

The small-f fudo is a sanctuary object. It reminds us that we are not alone, that others are also looking for the way out, and that together we will find it. Fudos create mindful space. When one is hung on a tree, fence, or other structure, it alerts seekers that one of their own has passed that way, and the spot becomes a sanctuary, a place of rest and encouragement. Think of it as Kilroy for hermits.

Various small fudos on my cot

The fudo’s cord binds the demons that whisper that life is pointless, that you're alone, that you'll never make
it out. We all make it out. Fudo says so, chained to his rock, sneering at the Devil.

The knots recall Fudo's resolve. They attest to the effectiveness of practice, and counter the despair inspired by the demons of doubt.

The ring (typically a washer or similar hardware) recalls Fudo's sword, and is a universal symbol of unity, loyalty, and redemption. The more abused the ring, the stronger it is. I collect mine from junkyards, roadsides, and beaches, to ensure that everyone I give one to gets a full arsenal of arse-kicking contempt for their particular hell.

The three strands in the classic hundred-year fudo stand for the Three Treasures: the Truth, the Teacher, and the Nation of Seekers. It also comes in four-strand, for the Four Noble Truths. Hundred-year fudos are made of nylon seine twine, available from any hardware store and virtually indestructible. I weld the knots with clear nail polish, which fuses them together. Fact is, apart intentional destruction, a well-built hundred-year fudo may last a good deal longer than that.

There are other designs with large or fancy rings, manifold strands, and kumihimo cords. But all serve the same purpose, and have exactly the same value as the plain old hundred-year "washer on a string".

To date I've made over two hundred fudos. Some were big, complex, and colourful. Most were 3- and 4-strand hundred-years. Some I gave away: to friends in need, strangers in need, fellow seekers. The rest I hung in forests, deserts, parks, cemeteries, rest stops; on beaches, paths, roadsides, and islands; by rivers, highways, lakes, railways, Buddhist and Christian monasteries; in parking lots and hobo jungles and ghettos and factories and schools. And I've sent fistfuls off with others, to tag their own paths and homelands.

So if you see one of these, that's what it is: a high-five from us, Fudo's crew.

My nephew T-Bone ponders an
8-strander we hung in a swamp

The Capital Punishment Koan

But the good news is I did change my heart. It just took a while to generate the will. And that's my right. I also get better at this stuff. And that's all God asks. Live this moment right; the past is his property. I am no different from everything else: I'm not what I was. And I'm not even what I've done. That was the koan Gautama gave to Angulimala, the serial killer who became his disciple. All you have to do to please God is strive. He accepts all progress, even that which is invisible to others, even that which is invisible to you, as full payment. That's why we live so many lives. In point of fact, we live as many lives as it takes. All of us. No Heart Left Behind. Fudo closes the door on an empty room. That's his vow.

And by this truth, capital punishment is not just technically murder, it's the random, joyful murder of serial killers. You never kill the man who killed; every criminal executed is innocent, and that would be the case even if you crucified him the very night. Admittedly, that point is academic. But when you kill a man who has lived twenty more years, suffering in the man-made Hell of prison, you are not only killing a complete stranger, you're often killing a soul seared generous and kind in a fire you set. So don't come snivelling around here with your "eye for an eye;" you've taken a soul for an eye.

Hence the koan of capital punishment: Whose soul have you taken?

Wu Ya's commentary: "Not mine. Anybody missing a soul?"


(Adapted from "100 Days on the Mountain," copyright RK Henderson. Photo courtesy of WikiMedia and Rafael Pi Belda [photographer].)

Good Book: The Zen Path Through Depression

Depression is the elephant in the meditation hall. Virtually all Zenners suffer from it; nobody becomes a monk because he's happy. But Zen has a macho tradition, and since depression is an illness without visible wounds, the old right-wing arithmetic applies:

machismo + (unauthorised suffering) = rejection.

Thus the institutional response to depressed Zenners ranges from supportive assistance, to conditional acceptance, to outright insult. Students are as likely to be told that they're "attached," that they have the "wrong perspective," or that they're just plain lazy, as to receive useful, scientifically-valid teaching.

In short, depression is our evolution, and our response to it sometimes amounts to creationism: a crap alibi against having to admit that our founders didn't fully understand something.

Fudo-esque confrontation of that heritage is just one strength of Philip Martin's The Zen Path Through Depression. In sensible, measured tones, he accompanies the reader, in the Franciscan sense of the word, through the myriad symptoms of depression: disabling lack of energy; paralysing panic; rumination; pointless rage; guilt and self-recrimination.

Physical symptoms of a disease as physical as diabetes, albeit not yet as well-understood.

I should say that I approached this book with trepidation, and wouldn't have approached it at all if I hadn't been desperate. I had beaten depression with Zen seven years before, and been a monk ever since – it was the first thing I found that could bully the bully.

But two years ago I got nailed again, and this time my Zen practice wasn't up to it. Even admitting that took months. When I finally ordered Martin's book I was afraid I'd either get a pop-psy puff piece with some trendy Zen around the edges, or a traditional Zen treatise that flipped a few koans at me and said, "Stop being depressed."

Happily, what I actually received was a scholarly catalogue of the medical symptoms at one chapter each, along with what modern science knows about their origins. Just that helps a lot, to put things in context and demonstrate that you're neither crazy nor irresponsible. This is followed up by square, monastic-grade Zen analysis of the case.

In essence, Martin says, "This is your mind. This is your mind on depression." And that was as effective as the medication in retuning my mind.

Depression is a lonely hell; shame and embarrassment convince you it's all your fault. Martin proves that it's not. "In our depression," he writes,

…we can start to heal by accepting that a great part of our becoming depressed, as well as much of getting over it, may not be within our control. In doing so, we can let ourselves off the hook, and stop taking the blame.

The next move is genius: once his orthodox Zen prescription to accept what is takes the pressure off, he scratches a few questions on the last page of each chapter. You don't have to consider them; only if you want to.

Dig:

Examine your beliefs about suffering. Do you believe it is inevitable? Or that it builds character? Is suffering connected with struggle for you? Would there be no life without suffering?

Seems pretty anodyne now, but at the time, with my brain freshly stabilised by a few pills and recharged by Martin's explanations, this stuff was Drano. Note again his classic Zen: no answers. There aren't any wrong thoughts, you just have to be aware of what you're thinking.

Doesn't seem like it would work, but it does. The questions, as much as the teaching, flushed out my system.

It would be hard to imagine a writer better qualified for the job. Martin is a long-time student of Zen; a certified and experienced therapist; and most important, a sufferer of hardcore depression.

This guy doesn’t have a condescending bone in his body. He's a brother.

As the practice began to take, The Zen Path Through Depression felt so good that I started rationing it because I didn't want to run out. When I got low, I would ask myself, "OK, I feel bad, but is it Path-worthy?" And that alone motivated me to endure, to find the strength in my backbone, to haul myself up by my sandal straps.

And pop went the depression.

In the end, with a supportive family, coöperative doctors, my monastic practice, and Martin's book, I got back on my feet. I was even able eventually to stop taking the meds. (But if the depression comes back, I'm back on. Like, now. Don't be afraid of meds, brothers and sisters. They're undramatic drugs, no scarier than aspirin, for a sickness no more imaginary than migraines.)

And while you're up, get a copy of The Zen Path Through Depression. When I needed a lot of help, this book was a lot of help.