"The secret of writing about Zen practice is sincerity, and if you can fake that, you've got it made."
My riff on a quotation from George Burns. Or Jean Giraudoux, or Groucho Marx, or any of several other posited sources. It's likely an old saw from Yiddish theatre or similar Jewish art form. Not only are many proposed authors [none of whom claimed to invent it] Jewish, but the quip itself has the distinct salt of Hebrew insight.
(Photo of a 'George Burns' variety rose courtesy of Nadia Talent and Wikimedia Commons.)
"Within darkness there is light, do not be against the light."
Shítóu Xīqiān (Sekitō Kisen)
Best of thoughts to my Jewish brothers and sisters worldwide on this first night of the Festival of Light.
Chanukah 2023 - 7 to 15 December.
(5784 - 25 Kislev to 2 Tevet.)
(Photo courtesy of Benigno Hoyuela and Unsplash.com.)
Thus I am one of few goyim to have experienced the blessing of Jewish grandparents.
During that time I came to relish the Hebrew world view – so similar to my own Scottish and Old Settler heritage, yet so... not.
Upgraded, as it were. Different data, same conclusion. And with a wicked snap no Scot could despise.
So twenty years later, when, having become a Zen monk, I encountered the following online, I was primed to appreciate it.
The following is one of many well-shared excerpts from Zen Judaism: For You a Little Enlightenment, a short 2002 book by David M. Bader that took the early Net by storm. The site I saved my own text from has long since gone to the 404 meadows, but Heller Web Space preserves a close facsimile, with appropriately Web 2.0 æsthetics.
So enjoy this spin on the wisdom of the Ancestors, with refreshingly Nasrudinic clarity.
Zen Judaism
by David M. Bader
1. If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?
2. Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?
3. Drink tea and nourish life. With the first sip... joy. With the second... satisfaction. With the third, peace. With the fourth, a danish.
4. Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.
5. Accept misfortune as a blessing. Do not wish for perfect health or a life without problems. What would you talk about?
6. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single "oy".
7. There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited.And whose fault was that?
8. Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkes.
9. The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao is not Jewish.
10. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this, and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.
11. Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as the wooded glen. And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha with such rounded shoulders.
12. Be patient and achieve all things. Be impatient and achieve all things faster.
13. Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.
14. To practice Zen and the art of Jewish motorcycle maintenance, do the following: Get rid of the motorcycle. What were you thinking?
15. Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.
16. The Torah says, "Love thy neighbour as thyself." The Buddha says there is no "self." So, maybe you are off the hook.
17. The Buddha taught that one should practice loving kindness to all sentient beings. Still, would it kill you to find a nice sentient being who happens to be Jewish?
18. Though only your skin, sinews, and bones remain, though your blood and flesh dry up and wither away, yet shall you meditate and not stir until you have attained full Enlightenment. But first, a little nosh.
(Photo courtesy of Unsplash.com and a generous photographer.)
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 Buddhist bow to the lighted candles of my Jewish brothers and sisters worldwide.
Chanukah 2021 - 28 November to 6 December.
(5782 - 25 Kislev to 2 Tevet.)
(Photo courtesy of Ri Butov and Pixabay.com.)
Don't walk in front of me;
I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me;
I may not lead.
In fact, just stay the hell away from me.
(With apologies to generations of Jewish summer camp kids.)
(Photo courtesy of Finn Norstrøm, Arkivverket, and Wikimedia Commons.)
"When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten."
This line, written by Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, is incisive; equal to an revolutionary treatise, all by itself.
Reading it again, I'm reminded of several points of insight I've encountered in my past. For example, when I was a history undergrad, one of my professors described how America's white master class had forcibly converted captive Africans to Christianity in an attempt to render them docile and compliant. When, he said, the preacher fetched up against the many accounts of enslavement in Jewish scripture – accounts which rarely or never present it in a Godly light – he assured his enslaved congregation that those passages didn't mean what they seemed to mean; that they couldn't possibly understand such esoteric teachings.
"Of course, " said Dr. Francis, "this was complete nonsense. Those people knew full well what those Old Testament writers were talking about."
Later I encountered bitter capitalist denunciation of syndicalism. "Unions don't belong in The System!" they pouted. "They want to overthrow the free market!" Communism / socialism / atheism / totalitarianism / repression-depression-recession, fa-la-la-la-la.
But we lumpen learned unionism from capitalists. We implicitly understand such notions as monopoly, cornered markets, object value, possession, and the ethical justifications for acting in one's own interest, other considerations be damned. That the boss wants to kill this wolf is understandable. That he believes we've forgotten who the wolf is, is demeaning at best.
And then, of course, there's Bodhidharma. He said, "Just sit."
Literally.
That's his whole teaching.
All of it.
But in the fifteen-odd centuries since he said it, all manner of fa-la-la-la-la (or bup-po-so-en-jo-raku-ga-jo) has accrued on that small, inornate pedestal. Which was predictable; as I've quoted elsewhere, "Meditation is simple. That is why it so easily becomes complicated." You have to expect that, and accept it, and I do.
So now Zen has become a large corporate entity, complete with the usual demand for compliance, deference, and obedience, which has at length led to full-circle condemnation of Bodhidharma in some quarters. Or at least of others of his nation.
"You can't," we're assured, "possibly understand such complex, esoteric teachings."
And yet I meet more and more sheepdogs who smile and bow when we pass.
Brothers and sisters who know full well what the Old Man was talking about.
(Photo courtesy of Elxan Ehsan oğlu Qəniyev and Wikimedia Commons.)
The custodian of a large synagogue approached the rabbi one day and said, "Rabbi, I'm at wit's end. The temple is infested with mice and no matter what I do I can't get rid of them!"
"Ah," said the rabbi, "that one is easy. You go into town and you buy as many tiny little yarmulkes as you can find. You put one on each mouse, and you bar mitzvah him."
"You will never see those mice in the temple again."
Wu Ya's commentary: "Pest control."
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)
Last week a sangha sister drew my attention to a dramatic event in the Zenosphere: Adam Tebbe, founder of blog hub/online magazine Sweeping Zen, outed himself as an Evangelical Christian on that organisation's Facebook page.
Details are convoluted, but there's been much calumny heaped on him by earnest advocates of "don't know mind" and "radical acceptance". Which is also par for the course.
In the meantime, the principal is spewing Bible-babble in the Zen forum he built, in that tone-deaf way some Christians have. (When a former colleague muses that the account may have been hacked, he's told, "It's been hacked by Jesus Christ. Have a blessed day!")
As some comments under Adam's confession of faith attest, none of this has endeared him to his erstwhile co-travellers.
I've spent a week sleuthing the thing out – in classic institutional-Zen fashion, public acknowledgement has been nil – and have since developed a throbbing discursive headache. The brother in question is not uncomplicated, and Sweeping Zen has never been uncontroversial. I myself have serious reservations about the way some members use that podium to call down violence on individuals they judge deviant.
With Buddhists like that, who needs Christians?
So I'm not going to pronounce. I take the Ancestors at their word: if a behaviour isn't hurting you, and you have no objective evidence it's hurting others, do nothing. Wait for insight before drawing your own sword and hacking away.
But as regular readers will have divined, I do in fact have a few observations to offer on the phenomenon of Zen re-un-conversion.
First off, it's nothing new. Western Zen is a convert religion. Virtually all of us – 99+%, I'm dead certain – got here under our own steam, as seekers. Necessarily, many of us will continue straight through and out the other side. I confess that sometimes the behaviour of others in the Great Sangha prompts me to ponder doing the same.
Then I remember that nowhere else is better. Enlightenment (and salvation) is about me and what I do, not others or what they do.
Anyway, this is not the first come-to-Jesus the Zen community has seen, even of the ordained. (Among us "true people of no rank", of course.) The brass swept (no pun intended) those under the tatami too, but they happened and I saw them and I so bear witness.
Because hermits don't cover for institutions.
I'm also deeply sceptical of any self-proclaimed religious awakening that expresses contempt for former paths. You often see this in Zenners – we're a convert religion, remember – who smirk and jeer at Christians, Christianity, and even Christ.
Except for the Jews. They're very different. They smirk and jeer about Jews, Judaism, and the rabbinate.
By that measure, Adam has been remarkably even-handed, especially for a Christian. His rambling testimony includes a single brief sneer on Zen, toward the end. I've seen other recently former Zenners exhaustively call down the Lord on us, preaching incessantly about the Devil. (And so reminding me why I'm not a Christian anymore.)
However, he has apparently not done what ethics require and turned over his creation and dependent projects to former collaborators, giving them everything he has of value to those undertakings, and wishing them success and happiness in this life and the next.
The Christianity of our time is so perverted with contention and enemy-think that such loving sentiment is condemned as apostasy, even by mainstream churches. It simply will not do to help, or even fail to hinder, members of another faith.
The notion – indeed, the truth – that all authentic walkers of all paths further everyone's understanding of God; that the work of all honest seekers is vital and good, is buried under a mountain of triumphalist doubletalk.
So fie on the Holy Rollers, right?
But let's be careful not to look too closely at ourselves while all of this is going on. Certainly, let's not look deeply into the way some of us respond to this unexpected (on our path that misdoubts expectation) turn of events.
Sweeping Zen has been criticised by sincere, disciplined Zenners – including Your Servant – for the self-satisfied way it sometimes reacts to inconvenient humanity.
And now that humanity has happened again.
Brothers and sisters in the sangha: may I respectfully suggest that this is just the break we need to stop talking about Zen and start doing it.
(Photo of Albrecht Dürer's Kain erschlägt Abel courtesy of the US National Gallery of Art and Wikimedia Commons.)
Faith is quiet.
Doubt is loud.
Faith is supple.
Doubt is rigid.
Faith is calm.
Doubt is angry.
Faith faults self.
Doubt faults other.
You must have faith to understand this.
Everyone says they have faith, but few do.
Skilful discipleship means distinguishing the faithful from the fearful.
(Photo courtesy of Vinoth Chandar and Wikimedia Commons.)
But some sangha just have a giant chip on their shoulder about the Church, and so become the jutting jaw we hear about every year in the carol. You know: "Four colleybirds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a big honkin' juttin' Zen jaw." In so doing, they surrender all Yule to a fanatical fringe that speciously demands ownership of it, and their own religious convictions to crass competition.
We Boreals have a deep physiological need to confront the terrifying cold and black of Dark Solstice, and so the symbols of light and fire, of evergreen, ever-living, winter-fruiting vegetation, and general contempt of death and fear, crop up repeatedly throughout our hemisphere. It's perfectly logical to find religious significance in natural phenomena, the only indisputable scripture there is. That's why Rohatsu – marking the time the Buddha sat under a symbol of the cosmos for eight days straight and was reborn in the laser light of the morning star – is in December. The Jews commemorate a lamp that burned for eight days without oil; Greeks and Romans sacrificed to the Harvest God, who dies every year and is reborn the next. And Christians celebrate the birth of their Saviour – bringer of light, defeater of death – though he was actually born in March.
In other words, they celebrate the effect of Christ's coming, not its fact, but sadly that's more insight than many contemporary Christians can muster. And so they've made the Season of Peace a battleground. "Jesus is the reason for the season!" is not a cry of gratitude; it's a rebuke to people who take their kids to see Santa Claus.
So it's game, point, and match to sanctimony. But wait, here's Team Zen, taking the ice! Will they make this a game?
No.
Some Zenners campaign to remove Christmas trees from airports; razor Christ-themed carols from school "Winter" concerts; even ban Santa from the mall. (I don't even know where to start with those.) Others just wall themselves up in their little cells and chant loudly in fake Chinese to fend off any errant strains of Bing Crosby that might filtre through their double-glazing.
This in spite of the fact that Christmas is the most Buddhist of holidays; arguably more, actually, than it ever was Christian. It's Sekitō Kisen all over again:
Darkness is a word for merging upper and lower,
light is an expression for distinguishing pure and defiled.
The four gross elements return to their own natures like a baby taking to its mother:
fire heats, wind moves, water wets, earth is solid;
eye and form, ear and sound, nose and smell, tongue and taste—
thus in all things the leaves spread from the root.
The whole process must return to the source.
Noble and base are only manners of speaking;
right in light there is darkness but don’t confront it as darkness,
right in darkness there is light but don’t see it as light.
Light and dark are relative to one another like forward and backward steps.
Read this chant – possibly for a first honest time – and tell me it ain't a fair-dinkum Zen Christmas carol.
The only reasonable Zen response to the ancient rite of Jul is acceptance. Acceptance of its universal origin; of its truth; and crucially, of the Dharma, which clearly passes right down the middle of it.
We are in the delusion-slashing business. I respectfully suggest we apply those skills, now they are more vital than usual, to restoring the true meaning of – and demilitarising – Christmas.
May we look deeply, every one.
(Photo of Irish Christmas card courtesy of Shirley Wynne and Wikimedia Commons, from an album of Christmas cards collected by Georgina Pim of Crosthwaite Park, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, between 1881 and 1893.)
The Jewish community in the North Coast town where I grew up kept a low profile; though it gave us a few influential pioneers, I never met a practicing Jew until I grew up and moved away. But we knew they were there, thanks to a discreetly dignified synagogue downtown – which never seemed to be open – and this tiny section of the Odd Fellows graveyard. Giving rise to the following explanation: "One day a Jewish person came to town, built a synagogue, and died." Judging by the pebbles lining the memorials, rumours of the community's demise are greatly exaggerated.
Another mystery for us young goyim: "Who's Beth Hatfiloh?" Solved by my Lutheran friends: "She's a friend of Gloria Dei!"
Why has Regina Spektor so brilliantly and thoroughly nailed this thing? Is it because she's Jewish, legatee of millennia of probing meditation on the nature of God and his relationship with Man? Or is it because she's Russian, and accustomed to piercing sugar-coatings and staring daunting truths square in the eye? Or is it because she's American, gifted with a dancing kind of insight that expresses itself in gentle-scathing satire?
Or is it New York?
I don't know. All I know is, in Laughing With, Spektor totally nails it. This is exactly how I feel about God. It's also the definitive response to the fanatics ("crazies", she perceptively calls them) who constantly deplore the "secular" or irreligious nature of society, who insist they own God, that he speaks through them, and that everyone outside their circle lives apart from him. Practices the founders of all world religions pointedly condemned.
"… or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus."
Word.
(See what I did there?)
Laughing With
by Regina Spektor
No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God
When they're starving or freezing or so very poor
No one laughs at God
When the doctor calls after some routine tests
No one's laughing at God
When it's gotten real late
And their kid's not back from that party yet
No one laughs at God
When their airplane starts to uncontrollably shake
No one's laughing at God
When they see the one they love hand in hand with someone else
And they hope that they're mistaken
No one laughs at God
When the cops knock on their door
And they say we got some bad news, sir
No one's laughing at God
When there's a famine or fire or flood
But God can be funny
At a cocktail party when listening to a good God-themed joke
Or when the crazies say He hates us
And they get so red in the head you think they're about to choke
God can be funny,
When told he'll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious
Ha ha
Ha ha
No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God
When they've lost all they've got
And they don't know what for
No one laughs at God on the day they realize
That the last sight they'll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes
No one's laughing at God when they're saying their goodbyes
But God can be funny
At a cocktail party when listening to a good God-themed joke
Or when the crazies say He hates us
And they get so red in the head you think they're about to choke
God can be funny,
When told he'll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious
No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God in hospital
No one's laughing at God in a war
No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor
No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
We're all laughing with God
Last week a sangha sister drew my attention to a dramatic event in the Zenosphere: Adam Tebbe, founder of blog hub/online magazine Sweeping Zen, outed himself as an Evangelical Christian on that organisation's Facebook page..jpg)
