The Infinite Monk Theorem

"An infinite number of monks,
with an infinite number of zafus,
and an infinite amount of time,
would eventually get around to meditating."

Wu Ya

(This assertion has never been formally tested, but my suspicions are the results would be similar to those of another famous thought experiment.)




(Nineteenth century Japanese drawing of a monk meditating, or maybe sleeping, courtesy of the US Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons.)

Maximum Illumination

Enlightenment is the stated goal of Buddhism, possibly the only doctrine all denominations share, though variously defined.

As far as I know, all Zen lineages, diverse though we are, uphold the conviction that enlightenment is possible in this life; that it comes irrespective of social and material distinctions; and that meditation is the fundamental discipline of enlightenment practice.

In theory, we also hold our leaders to a "maximum illumination" standard; that is, the teacher must be the most enlightened person in the zendo. The old Chàn chronicles preserve accounts of itinerant peasants summarily unseating exalted abbots in dharma combat. And if that martial art has now mellowed to ritual sparing between genial sanghamates, in those old Chinese records it's presented as deadly earnest.

All of this goes to the strength with which the Ancestors cleaved to a central principle. To wit: if we're going to dropkick the Buddha's explicit orders for an egalitarian sangha, then the brother or sister monk we perch precariously on that perilous peak must at minimum embody awakening.

And it's at this point that we slam smack into the Christian concept of antinomianism.

For among the many commonalities our two religions share is an insistence on the possibility – nay, obligation – of attaining a superior spiritual state in this life. We call it enlightenment, they call it salvation, but though our understandings of those states differ in important ways, our certainty that they exist prompts coreligionists to announce themselves special and demand extra-scriptural privilege.

Specifically, they declare themselves leaders.

And this is where the antinomianism comes in. Because upon their ascension to secular power, two unproductive phenomena abruptly co-arise:

1. Their conduct becomes demonstrably unenlightened.

2. They insist this unenlightened conduct is in fact the height of enlightenment; it's just that the sangha are too pedestrian to grasp their higher wisdom.

And that second one is antinomianism. You see, it's really very simple: treating others like doormats is the soul of bodhisattva practice. It's just what arhats do, and if you were one, you'd get that

And there-in lies a crisis. Because it's not.

Not that defining enlightenment isn't hard. How can you tell if a person has attained a state that can't be comprehended, or even defined?

As the ancient Zen joke would have it: how do you eff the ineffable?

I've thought about this a lot. I've scrutinised my own experience; what's happened on the cushion, where my heart moves during and after kensho, what's changed in my personality in two decades of mindful practice.

I haven't become enlightened, but I've grown measurably, and the Buddha said that's evidence of nascent awakening.

So becoming a better person than you were pre-zazen is the test. Are you less judgemental now, more empathetic? Less uptight, more patient? Calmer? More loving, less ambitious?

Has your ego diminished, or inflated? Are you supple or brittle? Do you fret more in social contention, or less?

How do you measure up on the 8 Worldly Dharmas Illumination Indicator?

If these lights aren’t green, why waste your life becoming an even bigger ass than you already are by being boss?

In the end, I've gained one practical insight into the quandary of human limitation:

–––> It's what you do with it.

(NB: Not a new concept on these pages, but a new application of it.)

Annoyance, impatience, disappointment, despair, frustration; what do you do when they happen?

Do you use or manipulate others? Do you make cutting remarks or determine to get even?

Do you apologise when you've behaved in an ignorant, superior, or abusive fashion?

These are universal human challenges, but a moral authority must own and publicly grapple with them. And by this standard, you can see the risk you run to your own practice when you set yourself up as a guru.

Which is why my brotherly counsel is not to.

Of one thing I'm sure: selfish, inconsiderate, preëmptory behaviour is not a sign of enlightenment. And refusing to confess, apologise, and atone afterward indicates you're not even on the road.

It's not that I don't yet know enough about enlightenment.

It's that I know too much.


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

Curriculum Vitae

No board, no checkers
Calligraphy worth nothing
Round-eyed hermit monk

The Show

Practice isn't just sitting; nor is it just form.

Practice is what happens in your head while you're out living.

This truth may be a little more accessible to hermits, who seldom congregate for zazen, and whose indulgence in other forms is necessarily spare and simplified. But the stuff you do at Zen centre, while valuable and worthwhile, is only a rehearsal for practice.

The actual practice begins when you leave the zendo.

Or the cushion, for free-range monks like me.


(Photo courtesy of Petr Sidorov and Unsplash.com.)

Hermit Habit

The wildlife of the North Pacific rainforest is famously reserved; where the East has its flashy cardinals, red efts, and indigo buntings, our own rubber boas, rough-skinned newts, and varied thrushes are modestly beautiful. The odd Steller's jay or goldfinch may be a pleasant change of pace, but we're satisfied to return to the brown and russet uniform of our understated nation when they've passed.

While sitting my 100 Days on the Mountain, I sometimes daydreamed about founding a North Coast-native order of forest monks. And should that fancy ever gel, we will sit in the forest of my forebears, wearing the habit of our Douglas squirrel hosts: a hooded robe of honest Cascade umber, over an ochre jersey.



(Text edited from the notes for my book, 100 Days on the Mountain. Photo of Tamiasciurus douglasii courtesy of Ivie Metzen, the US National Park Service, and Wikimedia Commons.)

One-Legged Meditation

Though this seems at first glance avant-garde sculpture, in real life it's the famous one-legged torii of Nagasaki.

You can fill in its backstory yourself.

This Shinto devotional object was just another spirit gate, like thousands of others in Japan, until retrofitted for the Atomic Age by the US Air Force. The survivors took its still standing, despite the instant destruction of their entire city and the amputation of over half the monument, as an icon of hope. While rebuilding their home, they carefully preserved this gate, unmoved and unrestored, in front of the shrine that no longer existed behind it. (Though it soon would again.)

Today both are close-pressed by modern urban development, quite unlike the quiet neighbourhood in which they started, though neither has travelled so much as a yard since the day they were built.

And though all of this is as Shinto as it comes, I can't help but find commanding Zen significance in it, too.

To me, that war-veteran torii's silhouette – gates being a foundational metaphor for us, too – speaks to the nature of enlightenment practice. You practice where you are, how you are. If you lose a leg, you practice on the other.

And if an atomic bomb annihilates everything you know, you practice in the remains.

Nothing to do with machismo; it's just that you have no alternative.

I'm particularly touched by the Little Apocalypse – the tidal wave of concrete that drowned shrine and spirit gate in a matter of decades. Because while I struggle to imagine their Great Apocalypse – it's just more horror than my mind can honestly grasp – I've lived, and continue to live, the little one over and over.

Thus the sight of that silent, single-minded symbol of trust and true nature, standing up to its chin in a mindless race to oblivion, has special relevance for me. In that sense, notwithstanding religious distinctions or the brutality it's survived, we're comrade monks.

It's simply the most succinct expression of Things As They Are that I have found.

Today humanity is flirting with holocaust at least as hot as WWII. Given the geo-engineering challenges we choose to ignore; our growing embrace of political ideologies long proven suicidal; and the diplomatic tools we beta'd at Nagasaki, this could reasonably be the end.

It's difficult for me as a historian, a Zenner, and a decent guy, to remain in harness in the midst of our extinction.

So, what to do?

Well…

Sit down.

I'll also be keeping a photo of the one-legged torii of Nagasaki somewhere in the house, where I can see it.

(All photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Contemporary view also courtesy of Frank Gualtieri. View of torii after blast from bottom of stairs also courtesy of U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, 1945; Committee for Research of Photographs and Materials of the Atomic Bombing; Nagasaki Foundation for Promotion of Peace; and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. Torii's eye view of the devastated city also courtesy of 林重男 [Hayashi Shigeo].)

Alan Watts On Hermits

There’s always a very inconsiderable minority of these non-joiners. [...] But you will find that insecure societies are the most intolerant of those who are non-joiners. They are so unsure of the validity of their game rules that they say everyone must play. Now that’s a double-bind. You can’t say to a person you must play because what you’re saying is – you are required to do something which will be acceptable only if you do it voluntarily.

Alan Watts

Long ago I happened upon this teaching from Alan Watts – an Anglican priest, founding figure of Western Zen, and arguable Zen hermit – for whom I have attested admiration. He was specifically addressing the predicament of Buddhist hermits, but as was his habit, more basically referring to the universal status of free-range monks of all paths. Virtually all religions have them, though some meet us with greater grace than others. (I've been told that Zoroastrians, alone among major religions, have no hermits, but I might not believe it. It's possible they "have no hermits" in the same sense as Western Zen.)

Over the years I've returned to Watts' meditation on hermits and the Institution, and found it validating and insightful. Since fellow hermits and the hermit-curious rest here occasionally, I thought to spread the wealth.


(Photo courtesy of Ben Blennerhassett and Unsplash.com.)

WW: Major monk meal

(Fried eggs from real chickens, barbecued cheese curds, and salsa over steamed vegetables and brown rice. Why envy the immortal gods?)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Football monk

(From the monks' graveyard. Evidently, Brother Lawrence also worshipped at the altar of the Seahawks.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

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.)

WW: Holy shirt

(So I'm not sure whether to pass this monastic tee shirt into the rag bag or mass-produce them for sale to teenagers.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: In the monks' graveyard

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Putting Stuff Down For Fun and Profit

I was homophobic as a young man. It's true the logging town I grew up in wasn't the cultural nexus of the world, but that's an excuse, not a reason. The embarrassing part is that I kept being homophobic long after I left to get an excellent university education.

So the first lesson shall be:

Don't assume that bigots are ignorant, that they're "just doing what they've learned". It starts that way, sure, but if you're still doing it as an adult, something else is going on.

Something less innocent and more actionable.

What makes my case even less parsable is that I was always the kid who brooked no redneck crap from his peers. Bad-mouth any race or religion on my schoolyard, and you were in for a throw-down.

Homophobia is the only bigotry I ever went in for.

Figuring out how that happened took me a few decades, and is, for our purposes, peripheral. What's less mysterious is why it continued, long after I saw better, and how it finally ended.

The first is shamefully simple: into my twenties, friends and I bonded in part over regressive "jokes" – hack work that taxed our literary talents very little – and I was loathe to be "that guy", the one who takes exception, smashing the fourth wall and casting a pall over the party.

Sadly, it truly was as basic as that. And I suspect it's the same for most bigots: cowhearted fear of being excluded from a social cohort that defines itself, in whole or in part, by that reflex.

The end finally came when I just couldn't stand the ignominy anymore. One day in my early 30s, the rest of me sat the pathetic part down and said, "You're done. From this point, we're Queen's evidence on sexual orientation."

And that was that.

But here's the point of this post:

I thought I was doing this for my gay brothers and sisters: bringing them some greater measure of peace by leaving off my unsolicited judgement on matters well outside my jurisdiction.

But the instant I put that baloney down, a tremendous weight slid off my shoulders.

The relief was palpable – so physical I nearly wept. See, maintaining opposition against an entire demographic – any demographic, whether a certified target of the Right or Left – draws a killing amount of energy. You don't see it; you think your contempt and criticism hurt those other people. You think you're getting even, winning, reigning supreme, in your hammer-headed refusal to stand down from this fight that you picked.

While in reality your designated enemy doesn't even know who you are; the American expression "get over yourself" is germane here. So the only person out of pocket is you.

And the day you stop wasting yourself on that sustained tantrum sticks in your mind forever. That day you authorised yourself to invest all that capital in other, better, useful things. Now you can put those resources to ends that bring comfort, fulfilment, and satisfaction, rather than blindly incinerating them in the firebox of your petty anger.

And the next day, of course, I immediately discovered how many of my closest friends, even family, were gay. They'd been isolating me from that truth so as not to trigger the disdain that denied me their full companionship. And because my pouting kept me stupid, I was literally the last in our circle to know.

In other words, after all that concentrated rejection in the name of continued membership in my peer group, the odd man out was me. My friends, good people all, had given that rubbish up years before.

I think this early experience of clear-seeing primed me for the kensho that would make me a monk ten years later. Because convictions are worthless.

You can generate endless justifications for the unjustifiable, build palaces of pretext, rehearsing your case for a non-existent court that has no judge. But your efforts influence no objective outcome.

You don't change any law of physics; your hard frown wins no argument.

Because what is, is.

And unless you're an idiot, you don't resist it.


Perceiving how little the universe gives a damn about me liberated me from slavery to myself.


(Photo courtesy of Matthieu Bühler and Unsplash.com.)

Good Movie: Legend of Dajian Huineng

This is a fun movie, not least because it annoys the crap out of a lot of over-taught and under-practiced Zenners. Why, I'll get to in a minute.

Legend of Dajian Huineng (embedded in full above) is not so much the legend of Huineng – the hermit monk who's the last common ancestor of all surviving Chàn-descended lineages – as a legend of Huineng. The basics are all here: young peasant yearns to study the Dharma; family obligation keeps him illiterate and labouring; finally gets through monastery gate; clear-seeing impresses abbot; ends up usurping succession from equally legendary Shenxiu; becomes 6th and last patriarch of united Chàn.

Few of us have problems with that. It's the next act that raises Cain.

See, there's a single paragraph in the Platform Sutra – whence cometh Huineng's formal biography – that tells us he lived with a mountain tribe for 15 years after receiving transmission. According to the scribe, Huineng maintained a Buddhist lifestyle among the hunters, though his evangelism was limited to freeing trapped animals when possible and offering his hosts vegetarian alternatives.

Well, not to put too fine a point upon it… director Gui Zhenjie goes to town (or rather, the wilderness) on this footnote. He drops all the pithy poems, robed monks, and ancient temples, and picks up…

well…

• martial arts scenes. (Make that Billy Quan-school flying-fighter scenes.)
• a Captain Kirk-style cliff-top rescue.
• a several-week coma.
• a love triangle.
• not one, but two, pirate attacks.
• an overt feminist subplot.
• a complete Dances With Wolves narrative.
• a gothic torture scene.
• and a partridge in a pear tree.

(That the tribals eat.)

At last, in the final 3 minutes, the plot returns to record, as a stronger, wiser, dustier Huineng shows up at the monastery he'd set out for all those years ago and blows everybody away with his perfect insight. While still in the dooryard.

So the posers aren't wrong to say this is not a "good" film. To begin with, it can't decide whether it's a Zen-style bio-pic or a Saturday matinee. (And contrary to expectation, it does a much better job at the first than the second.) But I was engaged to the end, if only to satisfy my curiosity about what the director would pull out next.

The subtitles are, as is traditional, surreal; indeed, significantly more so than your garden-variety bargain-basement kung fu grinder. Supplied by a suspect intelligence – artificial or human – they render some passages downright impenetrable. Oft-repeated gaffes eventually cede to concentrated analysis, such as the "hunter team" that enforces "team" taboos and "team" honour, which the viewer's mind eventually resolves into "tribe". Or the master's "inner creed", which Huineng brilliantly pierces, to the consternation of the presumed "real" monks at the monastery. That one is, literally and figuratively, a koan.

But perhaps most bizarre (and then entertaining) is the tendency of 7th century Chinese people to call each other "bro".

Less endearing are sutra passages that drone on over the sole translation, "BUDDHIST SCRIPTURE", and esoteric ancestral verses transposed into random gibberish. Competent English translations of both are freely available online, and could simply have been copy-pasted into the .srt file.

Then there are a few clanging visual anachronisms (i.e., the use of chicken wire by Tang Dynasty hunter-gatherers), and a disturbing absence of ethnographic specifics on the exotic hill folk, who seem remarkably assimilated to Han culture (having, for example, zealously embraced the word "bro"), without, however, ever hearing of Buddhism. But humbugs of this sort, in a movie like this, serve in their whimsical way to enhance the experience.

As I've noted before, Zen luminaries are a tough subject for cinema, because the more impressive they get, the less they do. That said, Huineng's a worthy challenge, given the uniqueness of his story and its importance to Buddhist history. Sadly, though this effort has its moments – and would doubtless have more if someone cleaned up the subtitles – it's never going to do the man full justice. One fears others won't even try now, since a film purporting to do so is already in the can. (That's apparently what happened to Radio Caroline, another potentially great film, that unfortunately became a bad one before better scripts could prevail.)

But while we're waiting, we can enjoy Legend of Dajian Huineng on its own merits, both intended and unintended. The upload is a little wonky, dropping the subtitles briefly here and there, as well, in two short periods, as the entire soundtrack. Fortunately, both of them remain subtitled, so viewers can continue following. (As well as ever, any road.)

In the end, Legend has a scene for just about everybody, even if they aren't always people who've heard of Huineng. And that's got to be worth something, right?

Mending The Roof

After 20 years of this I know that practice is not like mending a roof and now the roof doesn't leak. It's more like patching a roof and now it doesn't leak there anymore. With each subsequent sit you patch another leak, until sooner or later you're replacing that first patch again, and then the rest, and placing still more new ones.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

We don't mend things in this practice. We practice mending things. This isn't why they call it "practice", but from now on it's why I do.

For some this open-endedness is a hard truth. It leads some non-Zenners to reject our religion out of hand, on the grounds that it's unproductive. I've tried pointing out that it has this in common with everything else – that material productivity is ephemeral at best, in all contexts – but they tend to defend their thesis by defining their terms very narrowly. ("My family life isn't unproductive. My wife and kids make me happy." I sincerely hope so… but your investment won't return any longer or better than mine. This statistic greatly disturbs some folks, in a culture that encourages us to view achievement as a thing that somehow outlives the achiever.)

All of which is old news for any Zen student of average smugness. So it's a bit galling that many of those think practice can change your fundamental nature: stop pain from hurting, loss from evoking grief, discomfort and lack of control from generating fear and anger. The patches you lay today will remain in place forever if you practice properly, they insist. Eventually you'll have a whole roof.

Or to put it scientifically, that web of random gravitational attraction holding in momentary proximity a squirming conglomeration of volatile components, none of which is a roof, will become a roof.

The only roof in the universe, no less. Because that's the power of a single human being and its mighty attitude.

And so the eternal issue of why practice comes up again. As we face the daily failure and futility of this existence – the fact that the register of paths we didn't take is multiplying hourly – we start to feel like frauds. We aren't buddhas. We don't have control of our emotions and reactions. We're still getting angry and sad and disheartened. We aren't sitting enough, or right, or maybe at all, sometimes.

In these moments I try to stop beating myself up for not being fixed. To look beyond complaints that my progress isn't permanent, my product isn’t perfect, and my monkery hasn't made me greater than the human being I was when I started.

Bit much to ask innit, in a universe where none of those things are possible.

But I can nail a mean patch now. I can bang down others as well, at standard human speed, with standard human results.

After which the roof is less broken, even if it isn't fixed.

If not this, what would you have me do?


Fondest compliments to the Nation of Seekers. This thing we do isn't easy, but neither is anything else.



(Photo courtesy of Sergeant Gustavo Olgiati, US Army; the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service; and Wikimedia Commons.)

Zen Judaism

In my university years I lived in a comfortably adequate basement apartment, where I developed a friendly rapport with my landlords – an elderly Jewish couple who lived upstairs. It was my first close relationship with a member of that community, and given our relative ages, over the next three years our interactions slipped into a familiar pattern.

Thus I am one of few goyim to have experienced the blessing of Jewish grandparents.

During that time I came to relish the Hebrew world view – so similar to my own Scottish and Old Settler heritage, yet so... not.

Upgraded, as it were. Different data, same conclusion. And with a wicked snap no Scot could despise.

So twenty years later, when, having become a Zen monk, I encountered the following online, I was primed to appreciate it.

The following is one of many well-shared excerpts from Zen Judaism: For You a Little Enlightenment, a short 2002 book by David M. Bader that took the early Net by storm. The site I saved my own text from has long since gone to the 404 meadows, but Heller Web Space preserves a close facsimile, with appropriately Web 2.0 æsthetics.

So enjoy this spin on the wisdom of the Ancestors, with refreshingly Nasrudinic clarity.

Zen Judaism
by David M. Bader

1. If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?

2. Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?

3. Drink tea and nourish life. With the first sip... joy. With the second... satisfaction. With the third, peace. With the fourth, a danish.

4. Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.

5. Accept misfortune as a blessing. Do not wish for perfect health or a life without problems. What would you talk about?

6. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single "oy".

7. There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited.And whose fault was that?

8. Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkes.

9. The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao is not Jewish.

10. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this, and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.

11. Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as the wooded glen. And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha with such rounded shoulders.

12. Be patient and achieve all things. Be impatient and achieve all things faster.

13. Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.

14. To practice Zen and the art of Jewish motorcycle maintenance, do the following: Get rid of the motorcycle. What were you thinking?

15. Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.

16. The Torah says, "Love thy neighbour as thyself." The Buddha says there is no "self." So, maybe you are off the hook.

17. The Buddha taught that one should practice loving kindness to all sentient beings. Still, would it kill you to find a nice sentient being who happens to be Jewish?

18. Though only your skin, sinews, and bones remain, though your blood and flesh dry up and wither away, yet shall you meditate and not stir until you have attained full Enlightenment. But first, a little nosh.


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

WW: New teeshirt

(Each summer I gift myself a new teeshirt. This is last year's; I forgot to upload a photo of it then.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Just Sleep

Among many incisive observations in Adam Savage's maker manifesto Every Tool is a Hammer, I found this boldest:

"There is no skill in the world at which you get better the less sleep you have."

Reading it, I declared aloud, "AMEN."

The belief that sleep deprivation is useful to enlightenment practice figures highly on the list of counter-productive teachings inflicted on Zen by the organised sangha. Our monasteries – largely indistinguishable from boot camps – glory in it: rousting monks afoot at freezing 0-dark-30, and then chastising those who fall asleep on the cushion. (Dōgen actually attained enlightenment to the sound of his neighour being beaten for this.)

It's worth mentioning that such machismo isn't limited to Buddhist houses, either. Most monastic establishments, of any kind, think stumbling about in a numb stupor is God's plan for humanity.

But it's not.

The fact is, any state that compromises your brain's ability to focus – being drunk or high, cold, hot, hungry, under stress, in pain – reduces the quality of zazen. And sleep is possibly the most important of all. I've found the more seriously I take it – valuing sleep as highly as sitting – the better I practice.

This lesson landed with an audible thud in the early days of my 100 Days on the Mountain. I hadn't planned for an adequate bed, and the lack of rest complicated my practice for every one of those 100 days.

In the end, it's your right and responsibility to decide whether to sleep or sit in any given moment. I eventually learned to do both simultaneously, out there on ango, a technique I still fall back on sometimes here in the Red Dust World.

In any case, it's always well to keep self-hatred – such as "I wouldn't be sleepy if I were a better monk" – in view. It's so easy to confuse that with practice.

(Photo of a sleeping monk ...seal, courtesy of Jared Wong and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: What??

(I'm a monk, it's a sunny day... WHAT??)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Christmas in August

(Deck the halls with black monastic laundry. Same shrub you saw last December.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.