How Sudden Are You?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rather a koan in its own right, really.


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

Good Video: In the Footsteps of Wonhyo

Three weeks ago I wrote about the tendency in Western Zen to downplay the ongoing role of Korea in the development and direction of our religion. In that indictment I cited particularly the seminal importance, and extra-goryeonic obscurity, of Zen Ancestor Wonhyo – a Korean national hero who is only now receiving sustained Western attention.

And now I discover this video. Documenting a Wonhyo-themed pilgrimage through rural Korea by Tony MacGregor - Canadian writer for Seoul's English-language Korea Times - it's saturated with the kind of breathtaking imagery we often see in connexion with Japanese topics, but rarely Korean ones. Just the celebration of that nation's own spiritually-imbued landscape is worth the click, and makes for a very meditative visit.

The commentary is a little unfocused, and can get a bit precious in that way we Westerners have when we talk about Buddhism. But in some ways, that very wandering – mirroring Macgregor's literal ramble – is another reward, offering a wider vista on the subject. Particularly welcome is a brief account of tae guk kwon, that muscular Korean take on tai chi chuan that figured so highly in a memorable scene from Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring.

Toward the film's end, another meander takes us to an impromptu teisho by Sudoksa Bangjang Seol Jong Sunim, which is simultaneously predictably conservative (his topic is finding a teacher) and, from a Confucian perspective, revolutionary. Since the same could be said of Wonhyo, MacGregor seems to be underscoring his hero's continuing influence on Sôn, or Korean Zen.

In any event, I greatly enjoyed this documentary and suspect others will as well. As a lesson on an important Ancestor; an exposition of Korea's too-long ignored Zen heritage; and a tranquil tour of its compelling countryside, it's time well-spent.

Cutting the Crap

Among the more dubious traditions of Western Zen is a particularly frustrating custom we might sum up as "crap on Korea".

We needn't look far for its origins. The West was first missionised by teachers from Japan, where crapping on Korea is a national sport. That, coupled with the tedious piety of their Western descendants, about covers it.

And that's too bad, because not only is Korea a world power in actual Buddhism – equal to Japan, both historically and currently – but its take on the matter is refreshingly bold and vivacious.

My first encounter with Sôn – the Korean iteration of Ch'an, the parent tradition of Zen – came very early in my practice, when I discovered the teachings of Seung Sahn. To say he influenced my calling is an understatement; this is the guy who introduced me to 100 Days on the Mountain, which would go on to become the cumulative event of my enlightenment practice to date.

Seung's non-Imperial impact may also explain my love of Korean Buddhist cinema – a felicitous coïncidence, given that most Buddhist cinema is Korean. I've already reviewed one prime example in these pages, and have a few more in the tubes.

But when it comes to the power of compulsive crapping, Wonhyo must be Exhibit A.

Here's an experiment: ask any Zenner for an opinion on my brother Wonhyo. I don't say this to get you in trouble; chances are slim this person will vociferate. Rather, he or she will probably strike a blank expression and seek more information. Korean poet? Sôn ancestor?

Well, yeah. And also one of most influential Buddhist scholars in history.

You know, little stuff like that.

How seminal was Wonhyo? Dig this: few historians identify him as a Sôn (or Zen, or Ch'an) follower. Mostly they sum up his religious training in words similar to those of the New World Encyclopedia:

He entered Hwangnyongsa Temple as a monk, studied Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, and diligently practiced meditation.

Yeeeeah…. that's Zen, son. So why don't they just say Zen?

Well, after delving a bit and observing multiple sources dance around the subject, I've come to the conclusion that there wasn't any Zen/Sôn in Korea at the time.

Or rather, it was in its fetal stages.

Or rather, Wonhyo invented it. (In sangha with others, of course.)

One thing is certain: Seung Sahn refers to him multiple times as "Zen master Wonhyo". (At least in English.)

I could go on. How Wonhyo's works fill a library. How they directed the development of Zen throughout Asia – including Japan. How the man himself practiced a kind of assumption-busting Buddhism that elicits comparisons to Ikkyu.

And how his bounteous, germinal scholarship is only just now being systematically translated into English. (Ahem.)

But I'd rather share a particularly potent fragment of his Sôn. Check out this text, lifted from Wikipedia:

In 661 [Wonhyo] and a close friend […] were traveling to China [when] the pair were caught in a heavy downpour and forced to take shelter in what they believed to be an earthen sanctuary. During the night Wonhyo was overcome with thirst, and reaching out grasped what he perceived to be a gourd, and drinking from it was refreshed with a draught of cool, refreshing water. Upon waking the next morning, however, the companions discovered much to their amazement that their shelter was in fact an ancient tomb littered with human skulls, and the vessel from which Wonhyo had drunk was a human skull full of brackish water.

Upon seeing this, Wonhyo vomited.

Startled by the experience of believing that a gruesome liquid was a refreshing treat, Wonhyo was astonished at the power of the human mind to transform reality.

That-there's a straight-up shot of Korean Zen. It has something – ineffable, powerful – that other Zens lack.

And it busts open my mind.

(Photo of Seoul's Wonhyo Bridge courtesy of Minsoo Han and Wikimedia Commons.)

Koan of the Heroic Fish

A Western Zenner was visiting sacred sites in the mountains of Korea, when he happened upon the hermit Hyung meditating beside a stream.

"Why, you must be the great Hyung-roshi!" said the hiker. "Is it true that you live in perfect harmony with nature, never wanting for anything?"

"Yes," said Hyung, equanimously ignoring the Japanese honorific. "The living things of this mountain are my sangha, and they support my practice without fail."

"Give me a story to take home!" the tourist begged.

"Well," said Hyung, "a fish once saved my life."

"Wonderful!" cried the visitor. "How did this miracle happen?"

"I ate him," said Hyung.


Wu Ya's commentary: "Heroic fish gives his life for the flowers."



(A similar tale can be found in the teachings of Nasrudin.)

WW: Korean ritual

(My mother's neighbour is Korean, and every spring I see her in her front yard, drying great quantities of bracken fiddleheads. I once tried to strike up a conversation with her while she worked, but lack of common language limited us to smiles and nods. Still, I believe my gestures and tone of voice communicated my approval of her good sense. If nothing else, her yearly ritual brings some badly-needed earthiness to my mom's tightly-ordered retirement community.)

The 1 Habit of Truly Decent People

We're hearing a lot these days about patriotism and national greatness and ideological purity and economic theory and cold dead fingers. The speakers seem to take it for granted that their convictions are honourable, simply because they are convictions.

I've encountered this misconception again and again in my half-century walkabout, first as a historian and then as a religious man. Faith is sexy. It's dramatic and macho and you get to make stirring speeches with lots of sanctimonious platitudes, like a movie hero.

But take it from me: given enough indulgence and half a chance, believers will destroy the world.

Just being embattled doesn't confer honour. Bad causes are a giant waste of time and life, to say nothing of the mountain of karmic debt. Shall we free-associate a few examples?

• the Southern cause in the American Civil War
• the Third Reich
• Soviet Communism

All three demanded utter allegiance, promised endless glory, and made sacrifice a virtue. They were also pointless, stupid, and evil, and if there's a judgement at the end of this life, those who devoted their lives to them are unhappy now. Their unshakeable faith is worth exactly nothing.

Yet people continue to insist they can skip the humility, self-examination, and moral courage required of competent adults, and make a thing right by sheer force of conviction.

I know what that's like. I was a revolutionary myself. I clung tightly to a list of high-minded principles. That made me angry, which I took for a mark of righteousness. And that anger made me hypocritical, untrustworthy, and ultimately counter-revolutionary. I could – and did – turn on others for the slightest imagined shortcoming. (Worst of these: not being as angry as I was.)

Let's be clear: belief itself is the problem here. We're taught that it's the soul of decency, but it's not. Belief is meant constantly to be raked: kicked around, wrung out, scraped clean, tuned up, and thrown out entirely when broken. If you're rushing around this rock "knowing" stuff, you're morally out of control, and that makes you the problem here.

The following, in no particular order, are some of the questions I pitched myself during the gruelling Dharma combat I undertook when I became a monk. As the assiduous practice of zazen shifted me out of lawyer mode, things that had previously remained invisible – by slyly standing right on my chest – became clear.


Self-Interrogation

(Tying yourself to a chair and shining a bright light in your face is optional. But it worked for me.)

• Do my convictions make me a builder, or a predator?
• Do I applaud others who call for insight and solution, or judgement and reaction?
• Am I embattled because I'm right, or because I'm wrong?
• Is my strategy "bold advance", or "dogged defence"?
• Am I fighting ideas, or people?
• When I'm conservative, what am I conserving? Is my position rational, or emotional?
• When I'm progressive, what would I impose on others? Would these measures eliminate suffering, or just redistribute it?
• Do I count a victory when my actions result in more resentment, or less? When the right people suffer, or no-one does?
• Do I abandon comrades accused of wrongdoing, or take a public stand for fairness and forgiveness?
• What about opponents?
• Do I practice realpolitik, or morality?
• Do I speak louder while attacking, or defending?

Thanks to such questions (which in Zen practice are not directly answered), I sloughed off a lot of convictions that had accrued over the years by static cling. Now I have a core of well-vetted convictions that pass muster. (Mind: I don't say that I pass muster. I still have to hurl these challenges daily, and I'm daily shamed by the results. But that shame is productive.)

So give it a shot. See what you come up with.

It's the 1 Habit of Truly Decent People: they demand more of themselves than they do of others.


(Photo courtesy of John Pavelka, Wikimedia Commons, and the Democratic People's We Totally Are Guys Just Look At The Strength Of Our Conviction Republic of Korea.)

WW: Asian helmet

(This is one of those compact white hardhats that workers wear in Asia. This one turned up on the high tideline after a gale. I picture a seaman offshore, fighting his way across the deck. He turns to check something, and flip! -- no more helmet.)

Good Movie: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring

Here's one you gotta see. No, I mean you gotta see it. Because I can't describe it. (Goes on to describe movie.)

Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring seems to end suddenly after half an hour, then you look at your watch and 103 minutes have gone by. Movie buffs consider this a mark of excellence. What then to say about a film that still does this to you the third time you see it?

The basic story turns on the relationship between a hermit monk (shout out to the Homeless Brothers!) and an orphan left in his charge. Together they care for a temple in the middle of a remote mountain lake that doesn’t quite seem to be in this dimension; the sun speeds up and slows down, the temple rooms have no walls, and the pier it's built on drifts – upwind – without actually moving. (Or is the world drifting past it?)

Like Heraclitus' river, Spring, Summer is so packed with encoded clues that it's a new movie each time you watch it. The temple pet alone is fascinating. First it's a dog, then a cock, then a cat, and finally a snake. Why does the teenager steal the rooster? Why does the old man replace it with a cat? Is it solely to set up one of the best enlightenment metaphors ever filmed? (Plus that cat is an awesome actor. Uncredited,

of course. The Man strikes again.) And what's up with that (apparently winterised) snake?

And the koans keep coming: stunning tai-chi performed on ice by a "broken" man; a boat anchor used as penitence, from a boat that's never anchored; humiliated people literally losing their faces. And just when you're sure the whole thing takes place in some kind of snow globe, two police detectives show up. Carrying guns. And cell phones.

Unlike other "weird" movies, this one is never pretentious. Instead, Kim invites us on an Easter egg hunt, with permission to find a few even he may have missed; he's sangha, not teacher. And the insight is conveyed virtually without dialogue. What lines there are, are pithy and important. Take the old man's entire summation of the futility of greed: "The things you like, others also like."

Kim, who also plays the old hermit's successor (or predecessor, or maybe the old monk himself), gets seamless performances from his

actors: Jong-ho Kim as the mischievous, engaging child; Jae-kyeong Seo as an earnest, intense teenager; Young-min Kim as a man on the horns of yearning; and especially Yeong-su Oh, as the old hermit. Even the cops, walk-ons meant to inject you and me into the temple's universe, are skilfully out of synch. All of it gives Spring, Summer a fly-on-the-wall documentary feel, imparting a realism to the surrealism that, well, you have to see to get.

As a dissertation on samsara, it all could have been dull as dukkha, but in the end it's a very Korean film, full of humanity and passion. Just watching the director pull it off is worth the price of admission.

Finally, please be advised that none of this is accurate. Like sitting itself, the Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring that can be named is not Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring.

Hermitcraft: Fiddleheads

It's springtime, the annual Woodstock of foragers, so I'm going to post another wild edibles tip while the news is hot. And it's good news.

Fiddleheads are an iconic wild edible, one of those that, like wild asparagus and dandelion, are widely known even to respectable folk. Notwithstanding, few have actually eaten one. I guess that leaves more for me, but it's not in my nature to keep a good thing to myself, so buckle up.

Fiddleheads are the young shoots of various species of fern. On the North Coast, it's lady ferns (Athyrium). When I lived in Québec, we habitants ate fougères à l'autruche, (Matteuccia/Onoclea), called ostrich fern on the far bank. In all cases they're curled round and tight at the end, like a bishop's crosier or an old-time lacrosse racket. ("Fiddlehead" probably comes from the shoots of bracken fern [Pteridium], which look just like the head of a violin, but the term is commonly applied to all edible ferns.) They're only available for a week or so each year, which is to say, right now in planetary north. They're also a gastronomical delight, so time's a-wastin'.

These little delicacies grow in moist, shady places like low forests, riverbanks, and my yard. They can be anticipated where a wealth of last year's dead fern straw is lying around. Fiddleheads snap easily if grasped near the earth, or you can use a pair of scissors, like I do when I'm prepared, or a pocket knife, which is what I really do. They come in many shapes and sizes, owing to special and environmental variation, but only ones that are still fully round should be eaten; once they unwind and begin to leaf out, they're said to be toxic. Overripe sprouts haven't killed me yet, but they're stringy and acrid, so don't bother.

Most fiddleheads have a tenderness and subtle, earthy flavour that's hard to describe. Some folks suggest asparagus (another edible fern that comes on about now), though I find them much more understated than that. The exception is Pteridium, whose shoots are stout, hairy, vaguely chewy, and leafless, and pack a pronounced bitter-almond bite. There's compelling scientific that Pteridium may be carcinogenic in large quantities, though in Korea and Japan it provokes a national orgy, with heaps of its shoots for sale in grocery stores. Frankly, I really just don't much relish the flavour of Pteridium fiddleheads. You may feel differently.

But all the others I ingest with great gusto. They can be served raw in salad with a nice vinaigrette, but I like them best lightly steamed, with a little butter, lemon, and cracked pepper, or with shredded bacon. You can also drop your shoots in a good soup a few minutes before taking it off the stove, or lay them on rice before reheating it in the Replicator. In any case, the trick is always to cook them as little as possible. When in doubt, undercook. (If that's even technically possible.)

No matter how you eat them, there's nothing like fresh fiddleheads, so good that even city people sometimes eat them, as long as they come from a market and cost a hundred dollars. (As I've seen them in Québec.) But be brave and cut yours free-range. Out where nobody asked them to be, where they are therefore uncool, illegitimate, even seditious.

Livin' that hermit life.

Cereal box prize: Judd Grossman (Click the title above for music.) Judd is one of the few musicians I've encountered who shares my take on country music. If I'm a little chagrined to find I can't claim sole ownership of the territory, I'm happier to find someone who does it better. Better yet, you can listen to hours of Judd's music at this link, absolutely free. Some are demo excerpts, but most are full-length songs, performed live. Some are Judd's own voice and guitar, some are just Judd's guitar, and some are Judd in duet with others, and they're all great. Fine musicianship, fine arrangements, fine all around. Even if you don't like country, drop by. His style is pretty universal, his covers come from every genre of popular music, and his original compositions are excellent.