I first encountered the oft-cited invocation below in a newspaper column by United Congregational minister Dale Turner. At the time I assumed he was the author, but when the Internet happened years later, I found that its provenance is indeterminate. (No shade on the Rev. Turner, who frequently shared gems from his own tireless study, and undoubtedly flagged this as another in the column I read.)
In fact, no-one seems to know where these memorable lines come from. One source claims it's a traditional Kenyan prayer, but I was unable to verify that, either.
As for me, its very anonymity is value-added. Those many pithy, compelling observations that knock around the world, repeated for generations, unattributed or misattributed, are often the most profound; the mere fact they've travelled so far demonstrates how powerful they are.
Any road, this one became a form in my Christian practice. Now twenty years further, having taken the Zen path, I see no reason to change that.
So may this teaching from the great Zen master Anon be a guide and a buttress to fellow seekers in the coming year.
The Truth Testimony
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth
From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth
From the laziness that is content with half truths
O God of Truth
Deliver us.
Like a lot of old people, I've come to find myself adrift at Christmas.
Family mostly gone. Friends busy with their own.
I never found a home in humanity. So here I sit.
There's a certain irony. I was always the Yuletide warrior: the guy who spent the year sourcing gifts, and immediately on first December, sent cards, decked halls, logged kitchen hours, all while listening to holiday music, alternating between seasonal radio and my ever-expanding battery of Christmas albums.
Who knew the holidays were yet another thing you eventually don't qualify for if you're not married?
I'm told there's an entire nation of us, we solitaries. Though we mostly don't know each other. Isolation is best performed alone.
But fear not. This isn't another treatise on the maudlin holiday of the outlier.
Because I've come to spread the good news of Zen.
I've said it before: Zen practice doesn't end suffering. It just helps you suffer better.
A fact of which I'm well-reminded in December.
Sure, I'd love to have a warm home full of love and children. Somebody to give to. Somebody to share with.
But I can always cherish the desire itself. In spite of our Western thoughtways – our conviction that life has a scoreboard, marking each passing second "earned" or "unearned" – just the belief in Christmas is joy enough.
There's also something to be said for standing outside of a thing to fully see into it. Clear-seeing is harder to pull off from too close.
As my world has shrunk to a room, I've gained a great deal of pleasure in this season. All that's going on around me. The responses that weather and light and sights and smells elicit. The memories, and yes, even the unrealised dreams.
They were good dreams. And I'm grateful that my society maintains this calendar month of sesshin to remind us of such things.
It's important to affirm that our insistence on separating people into winners and losers is delusion.
So this Christmas, as in the past, I'm once again listening to my Christmas radio playlist – over thirty holiday stations worldwide. And if it's hard to get too excited about baking for just myself, I've still got chai and sourdough coffee cake, and pumpkin soup for Christmas Eve, and hoppin' john on New Year's.
And I'll get to have Christmas dinner with my sister and her family. If my circle has dwindled to little more at this stage, it's also true that I look forward to that all year.
And the knowledge that even that isn't guaranteed, in this world of dew, keeps me treasuring it.
So once again I'll sit through midnight on New Year's Eve, holding mudra, minding my posture, and smiling inwardly as the fireworks drive this year out, never to be seen again.
And into that vacuum will immediately tumble… something else.
Creation is infinite. And I am small.
A heartfelt Merry Christmas to all my brothers and sisters. And if that's foreign to your practice, then at minimum, a deep December full of cheer and contemplation.
PS: If you've yet to discover Internet radio, and would like a taste, Christmas Radio Malta is one of my favourites. Their website player is dead, but you can click here on their stream URL to open it in your browser, or paste it into your media player.
I'm listening to it now.
(Photo of the Jellyfish Galaxy [ESO 137-001] and surrounding space courtesy of NASA and Wikipedia Commons.)
This unlikely 1967 Arlo Guthrie classic has become a Thanksgiving ritual for American radio stations, many of which spin it on that day. Some play it over and over for several hours, if not all day – though seldom or never on any other.
Yet everything about this track is anomalous. For starters, in a market that then insisted that all songs come in under three minutes – and remains uncomfortable with four to this day – this one tops 18. The whole A-side of its album!
It's also harshly critical of a particular American war, and conservatism in general, and despite what some would have you believe, that sort of thing has always been embargoed by American media. (Yes, even in the 60s.)
And finally, of course, it's not a song at all; more like a long monologue with a chorus at both ends. (This art form is called "talking blues": a sort of redneck rap that gained mainstream appreciation in the 30s when Arlo's dad, of whom some have heard, scored a hit of his own with one.)
In sum, it's a bit of a mystery how the Massacree met such wide success, or came to be so deeply associated with a quasi-religious holiday. Or that such a scathing assault on Cold War conventions still calls so many of the nation's angrily divided citizens to enjoy a good-natured laugh.
(And it's had that magic from the beginning. I played this recording in my high school history classes, to Reagan-era students who seized it with delight. There's just something about it. Discuss.)
One thing is clear: this gem of American pop culture is a true Thanksgiving blessing, given the genius of the writing and performance and the welcome relief of whimsy on such a solemn day. Guthrie's text and tone evoke the spirit of the era – and the rollicking ideals of its young. Realism and optimism; hope and resolve; humour and candour, all in equal measure.
I miss that. And them.
For the rest, this story Arlo tells in first person is fundamentally true, with allowance made for good storytelling. Alice really existed, she really had a restaurant, and it really wasn't called Alice's Restaurant. Arlo and a friend really were arrested for an environmental offence on Thanksgiving Day. They really did go to court. He really was later called up for the draught.
As for me, I don't know when I first heard it – early 70's, I'd guess; radio, no doubt – but it's been a favourite ever since. I loved Arlo's rural delivery, his youthful smartassery, his opposition to militarism and the Vietnam War, and his parody of military posturing. Above all I loved his trenchant wit.
All of which reinforced my own burgeoning career as a wiseacre. Now friends, there's only one or two things that the adults in my life might've done in response to this and the first was that they could have risen to their feet cheering, which wasn't very likely and I didn't expect it.
Anyway, here a half-century on, we're suddenly back in a place where singing a couple bars of Alice's Restaurant and walking out may be a duty we must all again perform. And two decades of Zen practice, with its tales of eccentric japes before the coercive glare of authority, have done little to spoil my taste for it.
So Happy Thanksgiving to my American brothers and sisters; peace and insight to all.
Matsuo Bashō (芭蕉) was a wandering Zen hermit of the Edo period, as well as an accomplished poet. Popularly considered the father of modern haiku, many of his verses are accepted as teaching in Zen circles today. The readily-memorised haiku format may drive some of this posterity, but there's no denying that Bashō's work often encodes palpable koanic insight.
Interestingly, his status as a self-trained free-range monk is rarely mentioned in our discussions of him, though we're happy to claim Bashō as the "Zen one" of Japan's Four Great Haikunists.
Thus do conservatives lay claim to the dissenters of yore.
Yet the eremitical nature of Bashō's practice is clearly evident in much of his work. Particularly his most famous poem, which is not merely lauded as Bashō's best, but in fact as the most awesomest haiku ever written, by anyone.
Feel up to it?
OK, clear your mind.
Ready?
the old pond
a frog jumps in
plop
That's it.
That's the poem.
Stuff to Notice
To begin with, this translation (Alan Watts, this time) is only one of dozens if not hundreds available; about which, more later. But I especially value Alan's take, emphasising as it does the humour that's central to Bashō's perspective.
Note also that while haiku – at least the classic kind – is supposed to contain references to nature, this one has nature coming out of its ears. I mean, there's no moonlight or cherry blossoms or summer rain or drifting snow. Nothing pretty, you dig. But nature? Yeah. It's got that in spades.
In his sardonic hermit way, Bashō seems to be saying, "I got yer nature, RIGHT HEAH!"
And then there's the Zen.
You may be thinking, "Big deal. Frog jumps in water. There's a noise. Nothing to see here."
And you may be right. I mean, you can get that kind of stuff anywhere, for cheap or free. Nothing unique is going on here. Nothing special.
Scared frog jumps in water, goes splash; not a headline you're likely to see in the Times.
Meanwhile, concentric circles are expanding in the water, lapping at the edges, returning through other circles approaching from behind. Frog resurfaces, climbs out. More circles. Wet frog drips, log gets wet, water runs off into pond.
The concentric circles expand and retract forever. The whole pond is implicated. And also its environs. And their environs. And all the environs beyond that.
And that's just one possible response. Maybe there's some suchness in there. Maybe some satori. Some admirers see all seven Zen principles of composition in these three banal lines.
Which is why they're sometimes called the most perfect haiku ever penned.
But not by its author, of course. We should also bear that in mind.
Language Matters
While we also remember language.
To start with, Bashō never wrote the poem reproduced above. And if by chance he had happened on it, none of that chicken scratch would have meant a thing to him. Because his text (per this source) was actually this:
古池や
蛙飛こむ
水の音
Which works out to:
furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
You don't need any Japanese to feel the visceral difference between this and literally anything it might have inspired in English. In fact, if you want to see just how thoroughly we anglophones can mess something up, check out the 32 translations catalogued here.
Robert Aitken's commentary on that page is also well worth the read, as is his stab at the source material:
The old pond has no walls;
a frog just jumps in;
do you say there is an echo?
And if you really want a plunge into the abyss, try Geoffrey Wilkinson, who starts with an acerbic comment on this whole frog thing, and then… well…
Go see for yourself. By the time Wilkinson's done he's taken you on a fascinating street tour of the haiku form and this one in particular, including several parodies by Japanese monks and poets over the past 500 years.
For example:
Old pond—
Bashō jumps in
the sound of water
– Zen master Sengai Gibon, 1750–1837.
Master Bashō,
at every plop
stops walking
– Anon, 18th century.
...while fellow hermit Ryōkan (1758–1831) had this to add:
The new pond—
not so much as the sound of
a frog jumping in
To say nothing of the fellow who wrote a limerick. (Yes, really.)
So if you're a fan of haiku, or hermits, or haiku-writing hermits, take a good surf into the lore of Bashō's frog. By the end of the evening you will have visited many corners of Zen, Japan, poetry, and history, and learned a great deal about the practice value of small bodies of water.
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)
(Here's another bullfrog [Rana (Lithobates) catesbeiana], rather better lit and differentiated from her background. She's a whole handful, likely weighing about a pound; I found her sitting zazen in the middle of a local bike path on a cool autumn day.
Literally just sitting, untroubled by bikes, dogs, or walkers, as one seldom finds her kind.
Frogs play an outsized role in Zen, but I'll temper my monastic impulses and guess that my sister's equanimous demeanour was down more likely to being zombied out on incipient hibernation, and heading to a winter bed in the muddy lake some yards away.)
"Strictly speaking, every unenlightened practitioner is mixing their own convictions and belief systems with Buddhism. There is no way around it.
"We need to acknowledge that in ourselves and understand that our perception of reality is clouded by many things, some of which are ideologies and beliefs."
—This salient practice point courtesy of an astute sanghamate in Reddit group r/Buddhism/.
(Photo of torii gate [a Shinto symbol that's been widely embraced by Japanese Zen] at Mosteiro Zem Budista, Ibiraçu, Brazil, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)
The only problem is that theory alone will not help us to be content with our practice.
Although practice of the buddha way is supposed to be the easiest thing in the world, I think it is a fact that we are never quite content with our practice.
Why?
– Though unattributed in the source, this very Soto teaching apparently comes from Muhō Nölke, former abbot of Antaiji.
(Photo courtesy of Antoine Taveneaux and Wikimedia Commons.)
The title of this post is a line from Mad Max: Fury Road, the 2015 instalment of the Mad Max film series.
Much has been said about these Australian productions. Unlike virtually every other movie "franchise" (a fast-food industry term that often denotes similar entertainment), it contains no weak links: every release is genetically different, and all five succeed both as stand-alone works and episodes of the larger story.
Reasons for this are highly speculated among film geeks. Suffice it to say that creator-director George Miller came into cinema with no formal training (he's actually a doctor – odd how often that happens) and aside from not knowing any better than to just go out and make a movie, he's also a bit unhinged.
In the best possible way, I mean.
Anyway.
Fury Road is a tale for our times. Made on the very cusp of the current collapse, it takes place, like all Mad Max movies, in a thoroughly collapsed world that was fanciful when the series began. In this respect, it's hard not to read it as allegory – nay, prophecy – of all that's pounding down on us now.
I don't want to spoil this epic for those who've yet to see it, but to service my theme, I'll just say that unlike previous Max films, Fury Road has two protagonists: the titular figure, whom we know well (though played by a new actor), and Furiosa, a newcomer who is in many respects his female prosopopoeia. (English. Use it or lose it.)
The two share a common if involuntary struggle – the old, damaged, half-crazy man, and the younger, vital, ultimately righteous woman – and in the end, Max quietly issues her the above warning.
The Zen of which is undeniable.
As a young man, I was determined not to give in to the hypocrisy and self-centred self-destruction of unworthy authority. Not to serve it, certainly, but also not to enable it. This is why I get both Max (who's my age) and Furiosa.
I understand the ambition to cast down the wicked, even if no-one else has your back, and the danger of accepting that crusade at heart-level, on behalf of others; you can't stop fighting without defecting.
In Zen we have an uneasy relationship with activism. Classic teaching condemns it outright, as wasted effort at best, and multiplying delusion at worst. The fact that this means we've given de facto (and sometimes active) support to unspeakable evil over thousands of years renders that reading of our practice unsound in my eyes.
In the late 20th century, Thich Nhat Hanh came up with the notion of Engaged Zen, of which Kevin Christopher Kobutsu Malone became the head of the arrow in North America. That Kobutsu was ultimately crushed by his ministry in no way invalidates it; if anything, it's a mark of honour. But it does go to Max's point.
I never served like either man, but I've experienced that crushing. And I think all Zenners should consider this thing that I wish I'd learned much younger than I am now.
That the main reason inquity always prevails is because it isolates its opponents, leaving them outgunned and outnumbered.
And that's why you can't beat evil without accepting it.
"The entire evolution of science would suggest that the best grammar for thinking about the world is that of change, not of permanence. Not of being, but of becoming.
"We can think of the world as made up of things. Of substances. Of entities. Of something that is. Or we can think of it as made up of events. Of happenings. Of processes. Of something that occurs. Something that does not last, and that undergoes continual transformation, that is not permanent in time.
[…]
"Thinking of the world as a collection of events, of processes, is the way that allows us to better grasp, comprehend, and describe it. […] The world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events.
[…]
"A stone is a prototypical 'thing': we can ask ourselves where it will be tomorrow. Conversely, a kiss is an 'event.' It makes no sense to ask where the kiss will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones.
"The basic units in terms of which we comprehend the world are not located in some specific point in space. […] They are spatially but also temporally delimited: they are events."
Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time
What Dr. Rovelli, internationally noted theoretical physicist and philosopher of science, is saying here, is that a rock isn't an object; it's an event. Which is true of literally every "thing"; they're phenomena, not matter. They only exist for a specific time, their natures changing from moment to moment. So time is the only thing objectively present in that space.
We think objects are solid and exist because we can't grasp the temporary (the word means "subject to time") nature of matter and energy – which are the components of "stuff".
But stuff is an illusion. (More accurately, it's a hasty conclusion, leading to a practical fiction.)
So the good doctor has at long last caught science up with Zen, of which this notion of an "empty" universe, where things don't really exist, but are instead an ever-changing stream of dependent co-arising (scientists call it "attraction") that never attains stasis, is a fundamental teaching.
Which is why every "thing" in the universe – you and me and rocks and trees and amœbas and planets and galaxies and Labrador retrievers – aren't objects or things at all, or even matter, but events.
Literal products of time, having a beginning and end, because the agglomeration of attractions that make us all up never settles on a permanent relationship, and eventually dissipates entirely, its components running off to join other processes, in the manner of a wave or a cloud.
(By the way, Dr. Rovelli also turns out to be a professor emeritus of L'Université Aix-Marseille Luminy, where I spent a year in the late 80s. An observation à propos of nothing but my startled satisfaction.)
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? Ok, 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.
Some months ago I had a refreshing conversation on Zen ethics with a fellow hermit on Mastodon. We're equally sceptical of quietism – the religious posture by which forms are judged sufficient to practice and action anathema – and our discussion helped me clarify some of my own thoughts on a matter that's critically pressing.
The quietist temptation pervades contemplative religions: this notion that real Zenners sit serenely with a satisfied smirk on their faces while injustice gallops unchallenged and others suffer.
It's easy to mistake that for dharma.
Quietism is the opposite of theological activism: the idea that true practice means doing good outside in the Red Dust World. Western Zenners most commonly encounter its ad absurdum form in those Christians who are called to sing, exhort, and engage in public "praise" (an archaic word for advertising) by way of filibustering hesitant believers and driving converts to the fold, where they too will presumably join in such questionable practice.
We non-Christians and former Christians tend to lean hard on this demographic when the topic of activism comes up, since this sort of exercise is easily criticised. But let us note also the Christians who care for the poor and imprisoned; assist the stranger and the foreigner; educate the illiterate; raise the downtrodden; and actively raise the levels of hope and opportunity in their community.
A rare few publicly oppose deliberate evil, often at significant personal risk, while others – Quakers, for example – go so far as to confront passive evil. While a minuscule fraction of the whole, these last still trounce the percentage of Buddhists doing it.
Which brings me back to the exchange with my brother. We began on common ground, agreeing that the popular Zen position that practice excuses us from protest is erroneous. That, said I, is an illogical conclusion; ethical people act, and as I've written before, if practice doesn't result in an ethical person, there's no need of it. (I, for example, am already a fully-transmitted Self-Absorbed Jackass. No need for cushions, candles, or things that go ding to attain that.)
In the end, my brother summed up this entire meditation in words he'd come to several years ago:
"If you don't sometimes sit down and shut up, you'll never be enlightened.
"If you don't sometimes stand up and shout, there's no reason to be enlightened."
He also offered an alternative phrasing (another translation, what) that I call "the Rinzai version":
"If you never get your ass on the cushion, you can never become enlightened.
"If you never get your ass off the cushion, there is no point to becoming enlightened."
Regular readers will comprehend which of these I'm most given to.
(Photograph of police arresting a Buddhist sitting lotus during the Clayoquot Sound protests courtesy of Aldo de Moor and Wikimedia Commons.)
In this short meditation, Rusty Ring favourite Peter Mayer sums up the lesson we all should have learned long ago, but that many – perhaps the majority – of us are still sulking over.
Candid elaboration on the Zen notion of dependent co-arising, as applied to the human condition (a subordinate form I prefer to call co-dependent arising), the whole track consists of little more than Peter's own voice and guitar, enhanced here and there with a ghostly violin at the edges. It all adds up to power that commands attention, and a sedate simplicity our sort esteem.
Another cut from Peter's excellent album Heaven Below.
I've got this on frequent rotation these days, as I absorb demands to take arms against successive waves of faceless, vaguely defined offenders. Give it a click; see if it doesn't help to keep you on-task as well.
NOBODY ASKS
by Peter Mayer
Nobody asks to be born
They just show up one day at life’s door
Saying here I am world
I’m a boy, I’m a girl
I'm rich, I am sick, I am poor
Nobody asks to be born
No one is given a say
They’re just thrown straight into the fray
The bell rings at ringside
And someone yells fight
Some just end up on the floor
Nobody asks to be born
And no one’s assured
Of a grade on the curve
Or a friend they can trust
Or a house where they’re loved
And no life includes
A book of how-to
Because nobody has lived it before
So to all the living be kind
Bless the saint and the sinner alike
And when babies arrive
With their unholy cries
Don’t be surprised by their scorn
I've been gratified over the years to encounter a small but steady circle of fellow hermits on social media. It's always encouraging to meet others on the path – a particular challenge that distinguishes our practice from that of our cœnobitic (collectively practicing) brothers and sisters.
However, the quality of our experiences, while less frequent, can be notably higher.
Because hermit monks meet on rigidly equal ground. We're ordained by no-one except our similarly equal mothers. Therefore we share, compare, and contrast from a position of parity.
And as none of us can invoke rank to overrule or silence another, we tend to do all of this freely, in sincere respect and gratitude.
Just having someone to talk to. Just that, leads us to cherish each other.
This is radically different from the way companionship works inside, where dominating "lesser" sangha is the defining role of teacher or senior student.
The obedience and hierarchy that are necessary in the monastery or Zen centre are pointless – impossible, actually – on our path; and as a hermit's teachers are often impersonal, we're in little danger of miring up in an obedience fetish.
Obedience to whom?
Throw in our civilian clothes, and layfolk are liable to be a bit mystified about what it is we "do". In such situations, it's natural to cite first what we don't do.
We don't teach.
We don't preach.
We don't accept supervision from those who do.
And we seldom practice in groups.
Most incisively, we cleave to our founder's insistence that enlightenment is not conferred. It's yours for the taking, and can't be refused or rescinded by anyone else.
Thus, the blog and social media component of my practice isn't about claiming authority I don't have. My efforts here aren't meant to teach others or arbitrate their enlightenment.
Rather, they help fulfil my duty of sangha. Supplying, for the most part, but receiving as well, when I'm lucky.
I greatly empathise with and appreciate my brothers and sisters on the path. This is a lonely calling, hard to triangulate, because our mistakes are made in solitude. Which means I'm frequently enlightened within minutes of encounters with other seekers.
A conundrum that's tormented me for 40 years, they resolved long ago.
(My timeline on these platforms is rather more political these days than I'm comfortable with, but don't be intimated; I prioritise good conversations about Zen and practice, and related topics.)
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