I recently stumbled on a Wikipedia entry entitled, somewhat nebulously, Zen Narratives. Among the things that might have meant, the article turns out to be a survey of innovations effected in Zen by Western adherents, and their probable origins. For those of us who find ourselves simultaneously in the West and practicing Zen, it's essential reading.
"In the 20th century the Traditional Zen Narrative was transformed into a modern narrative, due to the power of the Western colonial forces and the modernisation of Japan, and the popularization [of Zen] in the Western world."
The fact that the article is brief and non-technical makes it signally useful. And if you want to delve into a tributary point, the embedded links can keep you page-hopping for days.
For an even more candid snapshot of Western Zen at its Western-Zenniest, check out this Talk page, linked obliquely via "Zen Narratives'" own, wherein live Western Zen practitioners address the same issues, with varying degrees of scholarship and intellectual honesty. See how far you get before the room starts spinning and you have to sit zazen for half an hour to regain clarity.
In any case, I have no idea who chose not to call this piece "Movements in Western Zen", but it's well worth a stop. Surf in and see if you don't agree.
Gasshō.
(Photo courtesy of Makia Minich and Wikimedia Commons.)
According to Wikipedia's Chàn article, Zen's progenitors identified not one but two paths, or "entrances", to enlightenment. The first is via teaching, an intellectual process in which one reasons one's way to freedom. The second is practice, a Zen synonym for meditation and supporting effort.
This œcumenical perspective is undoubtedly Indian in orgin. Contemporary Hinduism, for example, recognises four equally-valid devotional systems, amounting in essence to four discrete religions, but all accepted as legitimate Hindu worship.
But modern Zenners will find that First Entrance challenging, given that intervening generations have rejected all but practice as authentic Zen. We may attend to teachings – particularly those given in-person by ordained masters – but we justify that as fuel for our Second Entrance zazen practice. (Although to be entirely candid, Soto for one has allowed a substantial whack of intellectual pursuit back in through the kitchen. So perhaps we should call the two Chàn approaches the Front Entrance and the Back Entrance.)
As for the Second Entrance, the Wikipedia entry illuminates four levels of primordial Chàn meditation:
Practice of the retribution of enmity: to accept all suffering as the fruition of past transgressions, without enmity or complaint
Practice of the acceptance of circumstances: to remain unmoved even by good fortune, recognising it as evanescent
Practice of the absence of craving: to be without craving, which is the source of all suffering
Practice of accordance with the Dharma: to eradicate wrong thoughts and practice the six perfections, without having any "practice"
The continuity here is stunning, as all of that's readily recognised in current Zen. If it's true that we've largely abandoned the First Entrance, here we are 1600 years later, still practicing the crap out of the Second.
And it's still working.
Proof that in spite of our comfortable fallacies, the human mind hasn't changed over the past several millennia. That all by itself is sufficient cause to mind the Ancestors.
Here's another burst of insight from that cagey lot down at Monty Python.
This time they put humanity in context with a song drawn, fittingly enough, from The Meaning of Life. One fated from the outset to become a seminal text in my spiritual training, because I too have long asserted that this whole Great Mind thing is just a largish vaudeville show. And here Eric Idle (aka the Pythons' resident Zen master) confirms my suspicions.
For the rest, kindly note that the figures cited in the work are scientifically demonstrable. (Making this is a rare example of a novelty song that contains, like, verifiable data, and is therefore acceptable to Wikipedia, among others.)
And that Eric's knack for a penetrating conclusion is the most electric since Lennon and McCartney.
Follows the tablature:
GALAXY SONG
by Eric Idle
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious, or daft
And you feel that you've had quite enough
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go 'round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth
1. Load any Wikipedia article, about anything.
2. Click on the first link in the main text of the article; links in (parentheses) or italics don't count.
3. Click the first link in that article, again avoiding parenthetical or italicised links. Then click on the first link in that article. And so on.
In most cases, no matter what topic you started on, you will eventually wind up at Philosophy. (If not, you probably either clicked on something that was in italics or parentheses, or somewhere you encountered a WP article whose first link took you out of Wikipedia. But this is rare.)
To test this claim, I started with the article on Haflinger horses. (I don't remember why.) Sure enough, after many clicks, I ended up at Philosophy.
I was curious to know where else the technique might lead, so I clicked on the first link there, too. That took me to Reality, then Reality to Existence, Existence to Awareness, Awareness to Consciousness, Consciousness to Quality (hello, Robert Pirsig!), Quality to Property... and then back to Philosophy; I'd finally pi'd out.
So there it is: our Big Bang. Human awareness itself originates in the perception and judging of Property. (A Quality, let us recognise, that only exists in our minds.)
Fellow Zenners, at the risk of being a Paine, I'll say it right out loud: our chains are forged.
(Photo courtesy of Jon Shave and Wikimedia Commons.)
