Fearless Practice

"I'm going to try speaking some reckless words and I want you to listen to them recklessly."

Zhang Wuzi

Quoted in Zhuangzi: Basic Writings, translated by Burton Watson.

(Photo courtesy of Rawpixel.com.)

Hermit Nation

For some years I've enjoyed sporadic correspondence with a fellow Zenner in England. After a few less-than-uplifting experiences with her Zen teacher, she's decided to try the hermit path, and asked me for a little sanghic perspective. Inevitably, the exchange ended up clarifying some things in my own mind as well. (Hence the value of sangha. As any teacher will tell you, helping others helps the helper.) So I thought I'd excerpt a bit of that conversation here, to spread the support around.

The sister in question is feeling the pull of her nature, though uncertain she can sustain a solitary practice, or that it will prove as fulfilling as the organised model. At the same time she feels like the institution doesn't respect her – that it views her as an isolated failure that must be repaired, or in extremis, rejected. That has led her to question her teacher's "never hermit" stance on alternatives.

As always, I didn't advocate any path to her, since I lack comprehensive knowledge of the facts and entities in play, and anyway, it ain't my karma at risk. But on this issue of only-ness, I felt compelled to give witness.

And so I wrote the following, with allowance for judicious editing:

As is frequently the case, I've been struck by the similarity of our life paths. We are, as I often say, a nation. This is very hard for the gregarious to grasp.

Although the neo-traditional Zen institution views people of our nature as unevolved or learning disabled, the fact is we are and always have been a demographic. One unserved by the innovated monastery model.

The same one that gave us the Buddha and Bodhidharma, to name just two.

And we seem to be coming out of the closet in greater numbers since the Boomers – great believers in authority, their market stance notwithstanding – began their slide into irrelevance.

Hermits don't necessarily seek isolation from others – I don't – but most of my adult life I've lived in rural areas; was raised in one, and have chosen to live in others when choice was mine.

But we live in a time when the rural areas that used to be despised by the urban and urbane have become chic, and they're clearing us rednecks away so they can take our land. It's a big topic, and for me, a painful one. Reminds me of the age of enclosure, and the segmenting of the European countryside into landed estates, which was the driving force that colonised the New World. 'Cept there's no place for us peasants to go this time.

From a practice perspective it doesn't matter much; you can be a hermit anywhere. But my preference is to be comfortably buffered from the rest of my species, and to be in daily contact with what remains. And that's harder to achieve in town.

As for your musings on Zen, I quite agree on all of them. Most of us find, when we encounter each other, that we've had similar experiences, received similar openings, and have much to offer each other in the way of teaching and support. We're the Buddha's only given monastic model, but formal Zen teachers (as well as those of other faiths) are great ones for saying that an unsupervised monk will quickly go off the rails and begin spouting bizarre, self-serving nonsense.

Which happens, of course, but not more often than it does in the Institution. And the result isn't crazier or more dangerous. From where I'm standing, it's clear that ordination is a risky state that few survive. Whereas my formal eremitical practice of assuming I understand nothing, mixed with a disciplining lack of social acceptance, has done a pretty good job of keeping me in my lane.

Anyway, when you mention Zen masters who run their monks as servants, that's my immediate thought. As a hermit, I can't imagine anybody cleaning up after me. Aside from the presumption, there's the fact that cleaning up my own messes is central to my practice; confronting chaos, accepting the necessity of soiling and breaking things, understanding how entirely I participate in universal entropy.

I suspect teachers who don't settle their own accounts have forgotten how unimpressive they are; given their working conditions, they can't help it.

As for me, "I'm nobody" has been my breathing mantra for twenty years. And I still think I'm the lead character in a movie from time to time; that tells you how much harder ordained types must have it.

Any road, society creates us, through a sort of petty terrorism, and at some point we just shrug and pull on the robe, to its great indignation. It's one reason I won't accept spiritual authority from other humans. I'm sometimes asked to address groups about Zen, and I always start by pointing out that I've never been ordained by anyone but my mother, that I have no unique understanding of anything, and that the next Zenner they meet will probably tell them I'm wrong about everything.

And I finish by telling them that anyone who says different about themselves is lying.

We hermits are a very diverse crowd – if we can be said to be a crowd – but I suspect all of us would agree with that last statement, at least.


Robin

(Photo courtesy of Matt Sclarandis and Unsplash.com.)

The Youthful Imperative

Alan Watts once said, "Now I’m a grandfather, and so I am no longer in awe of grandfathers." If I liked this 20 years ago, when I first heard it, today it teases a secret I feel obligated to share with my young brothers and sisters.

Old people like to say we've gained wisdom. We have better judgment; a longer view. Our superior familiarity has brought us perception and patience. We're slower to inflame, whether with anger or passion.

But the truth is, we're just tired.

Reviewing my twenties, I'm astonished by the heat of my prejudices, my penchant for assigning the role of villain to so many in my environment, my disrespectful impatience.

But I also remember how instinctively willing I was to break eggs, confront hypocrisy, power over and through impediments. Get crap done.

That irritated authority. And that brought pain. And, in surprisingly short order, that produced dread.

Eventually I slipped into idle middle-aged cowardice. AKA that "philosophical perspective" old people are so proud of.

Which is why humanity remains mired to the shoulders in solvable problems. Because our seniority gave us the power to hamstring those younger, and our terror of consequences, the motivation.

So now old people peeve me a lot more than they did before I was one. In my youth I took it for granted that their self-vaunted wisdom must be grounded at a least a little in reality.

And it is, a little.

But mostly it's just self-serving fear and laziness.

Let us meditate upon this uncomfortable truth:

When age brings humility, that's probably wisdom.
When it brings self-satisfaction, that's probably a learning disability.

Old age is an excellent time to practice don't-know-mind. You know, that thing we seldom embrace in our rhetoric and voting record. Because our task is to accept that we had our chance, and that the courage, vision, determination, and primal strength of the young is what we need now. Their willingness to rise to a challenge, even if they get a few things wrong. Even if – nightmare of senescence – they incur some personal damage.

This is their evolutionary role, their responsibility, their crucial contribution. Worry not, unproductive ones: they too will stumble into their day of wan platitudes; their age of weary wisdom.

But for now, they must bring – and we must honour – the dauntless insight of their youth.

Because someone has to actually do something around here.


(Classic meme courtesy of Alex Leo and Wikimedia Commons.)

Indecision Kyôsaku

"Most questions are the answer."

Genjo Marinello Osho
Choboji


(Photo courtesy of Unsplash.com and a generous photographer.)

Meade's Conundrum

In my university days I T.A.'d for a professor whose insights would have an enduring effect on my understanding of the Path. (Shout-out to Dr. Robert D. Meade, professor – and now sadly, human being – emeritus, who parlayed his position as ostensible psychology instructor into a successful conspiracy to overclock young minds.)

Among his many maxims – always delivered straight-faced – the following was a favourite with his gung-ho squad of student teaching assistants:

"Half of what I'm telling you is lies, but you don't know which half."

I think this is a foundational koan for Zen students, one we should hold in mindfulness. It comes into play whenever the old Zen centre vs. free range practice question is broached, or when I'm asked to discuss Zen with interested others, or when conflicts within the Great Sangha overspill their partitions.

I do believe you can't practice Zen effectively without accepting and practicing this teaching.

By the way, when transmitting Meade's Conundrum to my own students, I always appended Henderson's Corollary:

"…and neither do I."

I'm certain Dr. Meade would applaud.

My very best to the very best: those who are determined to do their very best.


(Photo of the hallowed halls courtesy of Andrew Kvalheim and Wikimedia Commons.)

The Sword of Righteousness

A few days ago I saw a humorous meme involving Ouija boards on a Facebook group for members of the church I grew up in. The fact that I still have respect for Christianity is entirely down to the religious training I received there, which was deep and reflective, and continues to be an asset to my Zen practice.

But we had a couple of "those" Christians, too.

So it was that the thread underneath contained a few protests and dire warnings about EVIL! and SATAN! and THE OCCULT!!! (They caution writers not to use caps lock and multiple punctuation, but it's dishonest not to when expressing the opinions of those who think in them.)

And this got me mulling the difference between real and fake religion.

In a real religion, you're the idiot in the room. Fake religion confers special knowledge, even superpowers, such as the ability to speak in tongues or handle snakes or see auras. Or even to sit in one position for hours, disregard pain, cure bodily ailments, and look into the souls of others.

In contrast, after practicing real religion you know less than you did before. Stuff you've always hated, you're not so sure about. Uncorroborated beliefs, you're less willing to shoulder. Facile explanations, shallow documentation, scriptural lawyerball, saints and saviours, you eschew. Answers at all become suspect.

You become dumb. The world is big, and you're not. You've spent your life flailing in a dark room, your sword helicoptering overhead like everyone else's, and now you just sit down and wait for reliable intel.

That's what happened to me. After a week of zazen, I knew nothing. Because I'd never known anything. My conversion experience left me small, as small as everyone else. And now I can't unsee our identical smallness.

Blessed with a church that prizes spiritual penetration, and a family that meets rubbish with corrosive sarcasm, I never believed any nonsense about parlour games and witches and backward rock music. But these days I'm considering the larger issue.

A true faith practice isn't about becoming an expert in special dimensions or states of consciousness or planes of existence that the uninitiated can't see or understand. We have teachings about that sort of thing in Buddhism, too, and my take on them is a convicted "whatever". Because I won't be distracted by trivia.

And that's the difference.

In fake religion, you strive to fill your mind with as much crap as possible. Those with the most crap, are the most accomplished.

In real religion, you strive to empty your mind of crap.

And the true disciples are those still shoveling.

(Photo of the Sword of Righteousness courtesy of Anthony Appleyard and Wikipedia Commons.)

Ignorance

"The trouble with people is not that they don’t know, but that they know so much that ain’t so."

Josh Billings

(Graphic courtesy of Nevit Dilmen and Wikimedia Commons.)

Scale

Humanity: "If a tree falls in the forest, and no-one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"

Rest of the Universe: "Mm. So, anyway…"


(Photo of Messier 63, just one galaxy in the M51 Group, all of whose lifeforms are noteworthy for the total lack of prestige any of them impute to humanity, courtesy of ESA/Hubble, NASA, and Wikimedia Commons.)

The Winston Churchill Effect

In Auntie's War: The BBC during the Second World War, Edward Stourton drops a bombshell.

He's talking about how radio – the original electronic medium – transformed Prime Minister Winston Churchill from a simple politician to a national fetish by bringing him into the sitting room of every British family. Hence all who are old enough can tell you exactly where they were when they heard him transmit these timeless words:

…we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

So indelible was this rallying cry that in Way Back Home – his 2015 anthem to his wartime childhood – Rod Stewart included a clip of this gravelly, defiant BBC broadcast.

That never happened.

It's not unusual for people to remember things wrong. "Play it again, Sam", "I am your father, Luke", "Elementary, my dear Watson!" "Beam me up, Scotty," and enough ersatz Mark Twain quotations to double his shelf, have all entered our collective knowledge. Or properly spoke, belief.

But this case isn't just a few transposed words. An entire nation has literally hallucinated a seminal event, complete with deep affective context and a whole range of sensory cues.

I'm not old enough to remember (or misremember) this broadcast, but reading Stourton's documentation of its nonexistence, I was absolutely floored. I grew up hearing that speech! Old people wouldn't shut up about it! I've entertained/annoyed others with my impression of that Churchill broadcast since high school!

But as it happens, Churchill only ever read out this text in Commons. It was reprinted in the papers next day, and doubtless some BBC presenters quoted it in their segments. But the PM, yea though he frequently addressed his people over the national service, only spoke these particular words into a microphone in 1949, when he was asked to cut the recording we incessantly hear in historical documentaries.

This is just the latest – if most dramatic – instance of the Winston Churchill Effect that I've encountered. Another is the pretty hippy girls who spat on returning Vietnam vets in the 60s and 70s. Many of us remember reading about this in the papers, or seeing it on TV. And in his excellent, highly-recommended autobiography, hermit monk Claude AnShin Thomas relates in some detail the time it happened to him personally.

Except it didn't.

This urban legend is a little easier to bust, given the logistics such an assault would demand. The attacker would have to gain access to a military airbase; loiter around the terminal unnoticed for hours; divine who in the crowd was a returning combat veteran; then approach very near said young man without attracting any attention, even from the target.

All while harbouring jarringly unhippy convictions.

These inconsistencies have bothered me since I was a kid, but I was still dumbfounded to learn no such event has ever been confirmed. Ever. Anywhere.

To be clear, I don't believe AnShin is lying. Rather, he's as certain of this memory as I am that at age 11 I read a front-page story in the local newspaper about a kid – named Richard, wearing a striped collared shirt in the photo – dying from heroin-injected Hallowe'en candy. He gobbed a treat upon returning home, then fell sick. His parents sent him to bed, but when he got worse they rushed him to the hospital, where doctors, little suspecting the cause of his condition, were unable to save him. Later, the candy wrapper was found to be pierced by a hypodermic needle.

You're probably already there. No such crime has ever been reported.

Ever.

Anywhere.

This disturbing bug in our OS has serious implications for our survival. It also vindicates the fundamental tenet of Zen: "don't-know mind". This is the state Zenners cultivate, to the best of our ability, because those opinions we call "facts" are very contingent, and much – perhaps most – of what we remember is inconsistent and imprecise.

And every so often, complete rubbish.

In the state of don't-know mind, we remain open to further data. In this position we stop sorting input into yes, no, and maybe, and just catalogue it. Because the need to respond ethically to external stimuli arises far less often than we think. And "making up your mind" about the rest amounts to shutting off your intelligence.

By not becoming attached to discrete data, we avoid the hysterical blindness it engenders. And, with a little luck and continuing sincere practice, the insanity that leads to.

As for Churchill, he'd get another shot at posterity, as the peroration of his famous Battle of Britain speech would soon be cast in bronze:

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

And this time he really did broadcast it, having first received tremendous acclaim in Parliament. Prevailed upon that evening, he re-read his masterful "finest hour" speech, against his will, pouting and mumbling, from the BBC desk.

At 10PM.

To very few listeners.

And critics who universally panned the whole transmission as lacklustre and forgettable in the next day's papers.

Nevertheless, a great majority of British subjects would forever recall how their hearts quickened and their spines stiffened to Churchill's electric performance, as they listened to him that afternoon.

Or after dinner.

There's some disagreement on that point.


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

Entire Zen Teaching

Sit down.
Shut up.
Pay attention.


(Photo courtesy of Benjamin Balazs and Pixabay.com.)

Knobs

Me at my station. Note how state-of-the-art it looks now that I've replaced all the knobs with rotary encoders.

Last year, after a prodigal decade, I got back into ham radio. Digging out my old gear and catching up with the new had a Rip Van Winkle quality; like all things tech, radio evolves at astounding speed.

There were also the inevitable jargon shifts. It's a universal human phenomenon – constantly adjusting our codes to confirm insiders and bar outsiders. Tech fields, with their giddy rate of material change, are especially given to it.

So it was that I spent weeks working out what a "rotary encoder" was. Something to do with Arduinos? (This after looking up "Arduino", which clarified but little. Now, having read some more and watched a few YouTube videos, I own one. And someday I hope to get it to do something.)

But "rotary encoders" appear on Arduino-less equipment, too. I soldiered on through the blizzard of rotary encoder references, till at last I cornered this majestic creature for close and thorough inspection. And lo I was enlightened.

It's a knob. You know: the round plastic thing you twist to turn up the volume, or change the frequency.

Apparently, in my absence, the rest of you figured out what a knob is, so we had to upgrade that terminology before you began to suspect we aren't as great as our game.

And that's why, starting tomorrow, I'm refitting all my doors with rotary encoders. Because I insist on cutting edge. I won't actually have to do anything; just call all my doorknobs "rotary encoders" from here on in. And I'll be miles ahead of you other dweebs.

Which meditation puts me in mind of a broader trend in my life these days. To wit, all of my religious and political opinions have dwindled and melded into one single iron principle:

Show me results or sod right the hell off.

As I age, I've quite lost patience with shell games. I'm not the least bit interested in thrice-busted cons (capitalism, Marxism, any scheme to sum up all human aspiration in a single sentence) and pseudo-science (economics foremost, along with a great steaming chunk of the other social sciences, yea though that's my academic preparation).

Nor do I retain any faith in religious eschatology. Try to sell me some Nigerian scam whereby I tolerate or cause suffering in this world in exchange for a pay-off in the next, and you'll see my veil of courtesy slip. Same with attempts to shame me into collusion. "You think too much of yourself. You can't possibly grasp the genius of God/guru/gospel."

Listen, O Knowing One: show me results or piss off. Validate your success. I want unspun stats, discrepant data, objective evaluation, adult-level honesty, sensitivity, and complexity. I don't care whether or not your approach is consistent with my religion, culture, or assumptions. If you've fixed something, I'll muck in.

If not, I won't let you finish your sentence.

This is the sword of Zen, as I've lived it. In my experience, "don't know mind" is both the essence and the action of this practice. When I fail at that, I fail at other things as well. When I succeed, I tend to reap results.

It's difficult not to get bogged in the quagmire of "knowing 'don't-know mind'". Humans are wired to "find" things, and then to conclude that others' troubles come from not having found them. (Or even from wickedly obscuring them.)

So not-knowing is a constant chore. Putting down the stuff I know, which I pick up every day, is a goal I'll ultimately never attain. But reaching gets results, so I keep doing it.

In the end, I guess the best advice I can give to myself or others is, respectfully:

Don't be a rotary encoder.


(Graphic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and the Newark Sunday Call.)

The Jutting Jaw

Some years ago I heard a story from the Bhagavad-Gita, in which a great warrior is called to battle, only to find himself facing his mother, his father, his best friend, his kindergarten teacher… in fact, everyone he ever knew.

It's one of the most fundamental koans in scripture, drilling into the heart of striving, dependent co-arising, enlightenment practice, and just plain existence.

But today I'm not contemplating the teaching itself. What's rendered me thoughtful for the moment is the reaction I often get when I share it with others:

"So what do you suggest we do, Mr. Sensitive Zen Hippie Guy?"

Such interlocutors are offended I've brought up the fact that everything we have was taken from someone else, and therefore living itself entails constant karmic consequences. Their reflexive response is to shut down discussion of this troubling, muddling scientific principle, before it jeopardises comfortable assumptions.

I often want to respond, "Well, Mr. Jutting Jaw, I've already got my hands full just dealing with my own karma. Suppose you get off your lazy arse and find your own answers."

And I sometimes do.

Because truth be told, jaws jut everywhere. In fact, the entire conservative impulse is nothing but jut. (I'm not just talking about political conservatism, although that is nothing but hammer-headed denial repackaged as ideology. But Conservatives aren't the only conservatives. We all angrily protect our sloth and cowardice.)

The Jutting Jaw has no truck with challenges. It has no time for uncontrolled variables or human complexity, which is why it hasn't either any relationship with logic, justice, or ethics.

The Jutting Jaw doesn't wait for facts or elaboration. Its motto is, "Bitch first, and if anybody asks questions, bitch louder."

It is a convicted advocate of Lynch's Law.

The Jutting Jaw is in you, and it's in me. It flounces out whenever I hear something I don't like, stomps in every time I'm accused of insufficiency or insensitivity or an ulterior motive I don't actually have. (And sometimes one I do.)

The Jutting Jaw generally signals itself with a distinct nervous tic: it begins most sentences with "Well" or "So". "Well, if that's the way you feel about it...", "Well, then, why don't you just...", "So, I guess you'd rather...". When you hear that, lay a quick wager. 'Cos jaws gonna jut.

It's the sarcasm that tells you your opponent isn't actually talking to you, or that you're not talking to her, or both. Because the argument – such as it is – addresses a point that hasn't been made.

So you're arguing with someone who's not there.

Which'll get you arrested on any street corner.

Insofar as this chip-on-the-shoulder brittleness opposes clear-seeing – and for that matter reason, morality, and sanity – I move we each weave dejutification into our practice. Let's engage to make reasoned, nonreactionary arguments, when we make any at all. Further, let us take a precept not to put words in others' mouths.

It's unsanitary.


(Photo of Gustav Vigeland's Sinnataggen courtesy of Lisabeth Wasp and Wikimedia Commons.)

The Flat Earth Koan

"Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the centre of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet.

"Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

Agent K
Men in Black

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

Street Level Zen: Don't Know Mind

"There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be an answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer."

Gertrude Stein


(Photo courtesy of H. Zell and Wikimedia Commons.)

The Cul-de-Sac of Science

This week a Zen droogie slipped me The Philosophy Force Five vs the Scientismists, a terrific graphic essay by Existential Comics. In this gripping tale of superhero¹ derring-do, five ferocious female filosophers confront three uniformly male [c.f. “unsupported hypotheses”] cavaliers of positivist complacency.

They’re annoying, those guys. Furthermore, their boorish self-congratulation gains no evidentiary weight by their peremptory tone. (Incidentally, one of them does not bear a striking resemblance to Neil DeGrasse Tyson. So stop saying he does.)

All of which fired my interest, because Scientism is the third wheel, alongside Taoism and Buddhism, of an up-and-coming Western school of Zen that is highly influential here. It’s called “Secular Buddhism” and/or “Atheist Zen”. In it, Scientism replaces the traditional Confucianism, an equally ad hoc, if older and Asian, retrofit I’ve already lambasted elsewhere.

I’ll leave a full workup for another time, but for now I’d like to suggest that evidence-based religion makes as much sense as revealed science. Which we tried for centuries, and some – such as creationists – are still trying to make happen.

To borrow an argument The Philosophy Force Five literally kick down their adversaries' throats: “Science can only tell us how to effectively [sic] pursue a goal, but no experiment has ever told us what we should value.”

What they do not point out is that the latter is also much harder to discover, and requires a great deal more intellect, to say nothing of perseverance, self-control, and courage. Science is in fact not the most difficult brainwork we do, and our compulsion for herding our best and brightest into it may yet prove maladaptive. (Which is Scientismist for "suicidal".)

By my reckoning, intellect, perseverance, self-control, and courage are also the foundation blocks of Zen. Aren't they prerequisite to our much-ballyhooed "don't know mind"? This is one reason I’m suspicious of the anti-religious zealotry of many Western Zenners. Atheist Zen seems about as doable to me as Atheist Christianity.

Please note that I wish my Secular Buddhist brothers and sisters health and success, have no intention of obstructing their teachings or practice, and learn a great deal from the insight they share. My argument is purely theoretical. And theory has no objective existence. See? I told you I was listening.

But as I grow older I’m learning that the market value of the scientific method is greatly diminished by the moral and intellectual laziness of many who claim it – particularly the sarcasm they’ve made a tribal language. In clinical terms, science seems to have died the same death as religion: strangled by the undisciplined ego of its adherents.

I believe we’re now suffering the consequences of this global catastrophe – the simultaneous extinction of insight and inquiry. In the end, it may well lead to our own.

But while you're waiting, be sure to read The Philosophy Force Five vs the Scientismists. It's either brilliantly hilarious, or hilariously brilliant.

Discuss.

¹"Superhero" is a registered trademark of Marvel Comics and DC Comics. God I wish I were joking.

(Graphic from the linked web comic by Existential Comics.)

Don't Know Mind

As you get older, you call every change in your views and attitudes an improvement. But it only is if it is; change can be growth or decay. And "experience" is a lazy man's plea: "My experience has cultured and corrected me!"

Fact is, shallow logic is contagious. Chances are, if you're appealing to your past for justification, you caught some along the way.

So many of my friends from the day espouse facile extremism, now that we're old. Right wing, for the most part, though some went the other way.

What we all have in common is that none of us have lived long enough to pull that off.



(Photo of an Earthling pondering one tiny arm of our small, unremarkable galaxy courtesy of Zach Dischner and Wikimedia Commons.)

Effort Kyôsaku

"In Buddhism there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you’re tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand."

Lin-ch'i (Rinzai)


(Photo of a Japanese sculptor's summation of existence courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

The Koan of Tradition

An aspect of Meditation in the Wild (Rusty Ring review here) that I greatly appreciated was author Charles S. Fisher's relentless pursuit of verifiable history in our practice models. This, as he points out, is hard to come by, given the piecemeal nature of early Buddhist documentation. Nevertheless, Fisher found many thought-provoking differences between current teaching and historical fact; I listed several in my review.

But I left out the most compelling, for more thorough consideration later:

The Shakyas, Fisher says, had no king.

Let that settle in for a minute. This is the approximate Buddhist equivalent of saying that Christ wasn't poor. It throws shade on a central element of our world view, and poses some provocative questions.

And as it turns out, my brother Charles was precise: not only were Gautama's people – a northern nation called the Shakyas – democratic, they weren't even Brahmins. In other words, the entire Buddhic origin story is false; Gautama was not in fact a prince. Nor was he a member of the immutable, unattainable Indian overclass. He was probably a Kshatriya, that is, an ordinary citizen, albeit at the top of the common heap.

Per Palikannon.com:

The Sākyans evidently had no king. Theirs was a republican form of government, probably with a leader, elected from time to time. The administration and judicial affairs of the gotta [clan] were discussed in their Santhāgāra…

(Note that final word, which clearly shares etymology with "sangha".)

This inconvenient truth may well be a gift, that employing authentic Zen don't-know-mind will smelt into usable gold. Therefore, may I respectfully suggest we question ourselves on this matter – without, as is our practice, answering – in the following vein:

• How does our renewed knowledge of the Buddha's true origins change our understanding of his perspectives and motivations?


• Why did we change the story?


• What does it mean that we changed the story?


• How does the factual version challenge us?


• Scare us?


• Uplift us?


• How about the mythical version?


• Are we required to correct this misconception?


• In what ways might the "enhanced" story endanger authentic practice?


• Can facts endanger authentic practice?


• Can both versions coexist in our practice?


• If so, how?


• If not, what are we called to do, as individual Zenners?


• Is this a problem?

And so on.


Peace and progress to the nation of seekers.

(Photo of morning in Kapilavastu, Nepali city of the Buddha's birth, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

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.)

359º Kyôsaku

"A point of view is merely one degree out of the three hundred and sixty degrees of a circle; each point of view can see from that point only, and so is three hundred and fifty nine degrees blind."

Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshi

(From Before Thinking.)

(Photo courtesy of Nevit Dilmen and Wikimedia Commons.)