Poem: The Frog Sutra

Could they be sutras?
In the temple well
frogs chant

Kansetsu


(POV photo of well courtesy of Gary Meulemans and Unsplash.com.)

Gone, Gone

This morning a brother in my Twitter sangha posted the following five paragraphs from the Pali canon (Dutiyaassutavāsutta, SN 12.62).

OK, four, plus intro. That, with allowance made for the verbose, refrain-heavy nature of Buddhist scripture, really comes to about half as much.

Nevertheless, I've dropped a TLDR at the end for the hard-of-waiting.

(Note: "disillusioned" is a positive thing in Buddhist texts. It means "freed from delusion". When you think about it, it's weird that we use that word as a complaint in English.)

So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s monastery. …

“Mendicants, when it comes to this body made up of the four primary elements, an unlearned ordinary person might become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed. Why is that? This body made up of the four primary elements is seen to accumulate and disperse, to be taken up and laid to rest. That’s why, when it comes to this body, an unlearned ordinary person might become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed.

But when it comes to that which is called ‘mind’ and also ‘sentience’ and also ‘consciousness’, an unlearned ordinary person is unable to become disillusioned, dispassionate, or freed. Why is that? Because for a long time they’ve been attached to it, thought of it as their own, and mistaken it: ‘This is mine, I am this, this is my self.’ That’s why, when it comes to this mind, an unlearned ordinary person is unable to become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed.

But an unlearned ordinary person would be better off taking this body made up of the four primary elements to be their self, rather than the mind. Why is that? This body made up of the four primary elements is seen to last for a year, or for two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, or a hundred years, or even longer.

But that which is called ‘mind’ and also ‘sentience’ and also ‘consciousness’ arises as one thing and ceases as another all day and all night. It’s like a monkey moving through the forest. It grabs hold of one branch, lets it go, and grabs another; then it lets that go and grabs yet another. In the same way, that which is called ‘mind’ and also ‘sentience’ and also ‘consciousness’ arises as one thing and ceases as another all day and all night.

TLDR: It's not hard to accept that our bodies are temporary. What we really don't like is that our personhood is just as biodegradable. It changes constantly – we cease to exist and then reappear in different form from moment to moment – until one day no trace, physical or metaphysical, remains of us.

Reading this, I became disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed.

Deep bow to my brother.


(Photo of a fragment from an 18th century Thai anthology of Pali canon teachings courtesy of the Chester Beatty Library [Dublin] and Wikimedia Commons.)

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?

The Jackalope Koan

If you think a horned rabbit exists, then you know nothing. For there is no such thing.

And if you don't think a horned rabbit exists, then you know nothing. For it clearly does.


(Extrapolated from versions of a teaching found in three sutras [Surangama, Platform, and Lankavatara], in which the Buddha or an Ancestor is said to have referred to a horned rabbit.)

(Graphic courtesy of MaxPixel.com and a generous contributor.)

The Smokey Bear Sutra

Recently stumbled over this in the course of a Zen surf:

Smokey Bear Sutra

It's Gary Snyder's 1969 bid to raise Smokey Bear to vajra status. A contemporary of Jack Kerouac, Snyder was an early American adopter of Zen – such as it existed in Western Buddhism's hippy phase.

Buddhism was popular among freethinking Westerners at the time, in part because it was (and is) viewed as territory ripe for conquest. As a religion with little cultural hegemony, local converts could make it advocate any bohemian thing they wanted. (This stands in contrast to Christianity, which has high cultural hegemony, and is therefore press-ganged into conservative crusades.)

Case in point: environmentalism, still a bedrock value of our Zen, though largely absent from the Asian sort. (Zen has well-established cultural hegemony there, and is consequently a conservative sandbox. See how that works?)

As it happens, Snyder wrote his neo-sutra to serve as Buddhism's contribution to the first Earth Day. What's most interesting to me is that he took Acala-vidyārāja – called Fudo Myōō in Japan, and patron of my practice – as his model, apparently because that figure is often depicted engulfed in flames. Snyder even flat-out appropriated Acala's mantra (namaḥ samanta vajrānāṃ caṇḍa-mahāroṣaṇa sphoṭaya hūṃ traṭ hāṃ māṃ), albeit with some creative transliteration.

Not that Fudo, or Smokey for that matter, probably cares.

Anyway, the text, and the comments Snyder made about it almost 50 years later, are worthwhile. They definitely capture that era, with its (sometimes cloying) earnestness, but mostly, the hope and determination that briefly motivated a generation.


(Photo courtesy of [the US] National Agricultural Library and Wikimedia Commons.)

What the Buddha's Master Taught Him

Ānāpānasmṛti – zazen, more or less – was the practice the Buddha's own instructor taught. It's a fairly mutinous, fundamentalist take on the subject, for a time and place where meditation had, as Christian Meditation master Laurence Freeman would later warn, become freighted with liturgy and expectations.

To this day, similar straightforward, unmuddled models are typical of contemplative schools across religions. For the Great Sangha, the primordial source of instruction is the Ānāpānasmṛti Sutra, according to which the entire form amounts to following the breath and addressing bodily drives, with an eye to drawing them down to a functional minimum.

This is still canon Zen, with allowance made for minor variation among schools and individuals.

Of course, this being Buddhism, we also immediately undertake to audit proper application of this too easily-memorised method against a multi-level numbered diagnostic, to wit, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment.

Your performance steps include:

• Smṛti, or mindfulness, leading to consciousness of objective reality, and – in direct contradiction to current Zen teaching – contemplation of dharma teachings.

• Dharmapravicaya, or analysis, employment of which leads to insight.

• Vīrya, or disciplined perseverance (note the relationship of this Sanskrit word to "virility"), i.e., consistent repetition of sitting.

• Prīt, joyful transport, which happens if you're doing it dutifully. (And more importantly, doesn't if you're not.)

• Prashrabdhi, peaceful abiding, though that's the opposite of caring about literally any of this. Leading to:

• Samādhi, an abiding state of mindful awareness.

And finally:

• Upekshā, detachment. You no longer invest in winning or losing, unseduced by the myriad delusions of separate existence, material progress, or personal esteem. Also described as "the death of ego".

It's possible I was a bit irreverent up there, but in fairness to myself, there's just something absurd about "don't-knowing" in seven explicated stages; refusing to admit that out loud amounts to dishonesty. Still, as a rough guide, the Seven Employee Improvement Goals are worthwhile; informed contemplation of same can in fact keep your head in the game.

As long as they don't become the game.

And according to the Buddha, the practice of ānāpānasmṛti in this fashion ultimately leads to the Big W: the release from suffering.

Which teaching is exact, per my experience.

For short periods, anyway.

But I'm not done yet.


(Photo courtesy of Mattia Faloretti and Unsplash.com.)/span>

Source Buddhism

I've been rereading The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, the succinct little Thich Nhat Hanh book that amounts, so far as I'm concerned, to our Bible.

Non-Buddhists may be astonished to learn we lack one of those. Instead, we maintain a libraryful of sutras – pamphlet-sized documents that more or less quote the Buddha – along with three or four additional libraries of epistolary commentary. And we Zenners tend to bust even that down to the Heart Sutra (a short summary of the Buddha's insights), four koan anthologies, and, in Soto, Dogen's Shobogenzo. (Other schools swap that last out for their own founders' teachings.)

But for my money, Heart satisfies the hunger for a source of record, something to tell us in no uncertain terms what we're supposed to be doing here. Heart was the book that made me a monk, and the one I return to in moments of despair and confusion. And it never lets me down, though each time I find I've never read it before.

Among insights gained this time is TNH's reference to "Source Buddhism", one of three streams he sorts modern Buddhism into, by way of understanding the differing perspectives. The other two are Many-Schools Buddhism, notable for its didactic nature, and the Mahayana, which emphasises the responsibility of practitioners to their species and world (the famous "bodhisattva principle").

And though my own tradition – Zen – sits squarely in that last camp, I find I'm a bit of a Sourcer.

Quite a Sourcer, really.

Source Buddhists insist on the primacy of the Buddha's teaching over all other authorities. What he said, is Buddhism. Anything else… might not be.

I think this is an important fixation, because humans compulsively pile everything they like under the rubrics they've already adopted. If they're pacifists, they define even their most bellicose conduct as perfect pacifism. If they're conservatives, each innovation they make becomes the soul of conservatism. If they're feminists, their every impulse reflects pure disgust for sexism – highest of all, their purely sexist ones.

Nowhere is this fatal flaw more evident than in religion.

And in no religion is it more evident than in Zen.

So it's comforting to know that in my instinctive sourcery, I'm paddling an Original Stream – perhaps the original stream – of Buddhism.

Because the path of the Buddha isn't always the smoothest, but I do believe it's the most effectual.

And in case you're wondering: yes. My own meandering improvisations thereupon do constitute "original Buddhic teaching".

Seriously; have you ever met a human?


(Photo of the 6th century Teaching Buddha in Ajanta Cave 16 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Galaxy Song

Here's another burst of insight from that cagey lot down at Monty Python.

This time they put humanity in context with a song drawn, fittingly enough, from The Meaning of Life. One fated from the outset to become a seminal text in my spiritual training, because I too have long asserted that this whole Great Mind thing is just a largish vaudeville show. And here Eric Idle (aka the Pythons' resident Zen master) confirms my suspicions.

For the rest, kindly note that the figures cited in the work are scientifically demonstrable. (Making this is a rare example of a novelty song that contains, like, verifiable data, and is therefore acceptable to Wikipedia, among others.)

And that Eric's knack for a penetrating conclusion is the most electric since Lennon and McCartney.

Follows the tablature:

GALAXY SONG
by Eric Idle

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious, or daft
And you feel that you've had quite enough

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide

We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go 'round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth

The Two Religious Dharmas

1. All religions are different.

Even a cursory survey shows they're the same.

2. All religions are the same.

What, are you blind? Or just stupid?

(From the Watsamatta Tripiṭaka, Sutra 3, Book 1. Graphic from L’Histoire Générale des Voyages [1747-1780] courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous contributor.)

The Dharma of Doctrine

Recently heard on Bhante Sujato's Dhammanet podcast (available from the website and the usual aggregators):

"A man found a piece of truth on the ground and picked it up. Seeing this, Mara smiled.

"'Why are you smiling?' asked the Buddha.

"'Just give him five minutes,' Mara answered. 'He'll make a doctrine out of it."


(Nepali painting of Mara's retinue courtesy of the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art and Wikimedia Commons.)

Into the Abyss

"Lion’s Roar Has Killed Buddhism", screams a recent headline on Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen blog.

Um… そうですね。

Don't get me wrong; I've called down the Western Buddhist press many times here on my own public confessional. Most of what passes for our media is pat, predictable, and embarrassingly bourgeois. Still, such a declaration, as sensational and click-baity as it sounds, must be at least a little over the top, eh?

As it happens, not so much.

My brother was reacting to The New Wave of Buddhist Psychedelics, a feature article on the Lion's Roar website that celebrates mind-disabling chemicals as enlightenment practice aids. Its very title asserts the existence of something called "Buddhist psychedelics", magical substances evidently developed by arhat pharmacologists to "get you over".

This is only the latest manifestation of a disturbing foible of Western Buddhism. Back in the 1960s, the hippies, justifiably disenchanted with their childhood religions, went trolling for alternatives. As they imported barely-understood Eastern philosophies from overseas, they were careful to "upgrade" them with their own values, incongruity be damned. Among these were environmental awareness, pacifism, New Age nutrition, gender equality, and sensuality, to name just five.

None of that is strictly-speaking Buddhic, though a strong sutric case could be made for the first two. The next two have to be lawyered up before they slide in, but perhaps the Buddha was suggesting them obliquely, while openly advocating the opposite.

Sly old Gautama. (Ahem.)

But that last one is out. Full stop.

The Baby Boomers were and are famously devoted to chasing sensations. "This I have seen; this I have felt." They wished themselves explorers, pioneers, eagerly barging in where angels fear to tread. (Ed. note: angels actually tread everywhere. They just don't loiter in pointless places.)

Their initial attraction to Zen was the far-out trips they hoped to experience while meditating. Those monks sitting all weird, not moving; they must see stuff, man. Go somewhere, baby.

The fact that zazen is emphatically the opposite of that is one of those contradictions many chose not to acknowledge.

But their favourite terra incognita – famously, infamously – was drugs. Thus the hippies augmented our culture's twin holocausts of tobacco and alcohol with a whole freezerful of new philtres, guaranteed to make you stupid or give us the rest of your money.

When I became a monk, pot was still viewed as a sacramental herb by a significant minority of the western sangha. If anything it's grown in esteem since, though without a crumb of justification; the Buddha was categorical, and common sense concurs, that anything that interferes with the free and natural function of a healthy mind obstructs enlightenment. (Not to be confused with substances taken to bring a malfunctioning brain back to parameter, otherwise known as medication.)

Anyone who's ever known a drug user knows they never make anyone a better person. We don't need to run this experiment an umpteenth time. We can simply validate the Buddha's foundational teaching on the matter, cross it off the list, and continue our authentic practice.

So that was annoying. But what's happening now – retro-chic promotion of acid trip as kensho – threatens to set the cause of ending suffering back fifty years.

Make that another fifty years.

Because it's not just self-imagined "psychonauts" at risk here; if it were, a hermit could just shrug and repeat what he always says to guru-worshipers, religious tourists, nihonophiles, and other posers he meets on the Buddha Way: "It's your karma, dude."

But Zen is important. Critical, in fact. It literally saved my life, and there are many, many others out there who are still desperately seeking it. To plough up their path, to mislead and reroute them into dead-end practices (or worse) is unconditionally the deadliest sin in Buddhism.

Tellingly, there is no precept against obscurantism. (Religion, yo.) But if you want another ten-thousand rides on this merry-go-round, just you keep it up, dharma pusher.

The only skilful response to "Buddhist psychedelics" is the same one we must give anyone suppressing the liberating truth that the Path is in-born, a universal birthright bundled free in every sentient mind, each of which comes into this life pre-programmed and fine-tuned for its single purpose: awakening.

Walking the Path requires no approval or assistance from anyone or anything. The power is inside, and nothing that isn't, is it.

Any other message – any other message – is delusory.

So on the off chance I've been vague about my thoughts on this issue, I'm going to plant my flag squarely and firmly in the open, where even stoned brothers and sisters can't fail to see it:

–––> The teaching that drugs are useful in Buddhist practice is evil.

It isn't a divergent model, a denominational difference, an alternate reading of the sutras, a newly-revealed insight, a simple disagreement among sangha of good faith, a questionable form grandfathered in by centuries of practice, or an inconsistency due to our human nature.

It's the deliberate generation of makyō, with attendant multiplication of suffering and delusion.

It makes the world a colder, more cynical, less compassionate place.

To put it succinctly: these people have joined the other side.


So there ya go, Lion. Looks like you have in fact found one thing psychedelics can accomplish. They can move a freakin' hermit to excommunicate you.

Have you any idea how far from reason you have to fall to achieve that?

Farther, I suspect, than an undrugged mind can take you.


See you on the road, brothers and sisters.

And don't eat the brown acid.


(Graphic courtesy of Hamed Khamees and Wikimedia Commons.)

Hermitcraft: Solitary Sesshin, Pt. 2: Planning

(For an overview of solitary sesshin, see Part I. For meal planning tips, see Part III.)

Planning is the difference between a sustaining sesshin and wasted time. Plan well, and you'll "touch the mind". Don't plan, and you'll touch frustration.

It's a good idea to start a week in advance. Though slapping a sesshin together the night before becomes doable after you've got a few under your belt, in all cases a longer runway makes for better practice.

Take that lead week to:

• Plan your menu (specific tips here).
• Procure supplies.
• Prepare time-consuming dishes in advance.
• Print out Net-sourced study materials; multiple copies of your sesshin schedule; and your meal plan. This allows you to avoid computers and other soma-screens on show day, which is a major prop to concentration and mindfulness.

On Sesshin Eve:

• Prep your tea pot so all you have to do next morning is heat and pour water.
• Ready zafu and zabuton, and any other paraphernalia such as timer, bell, tuque, etc, in the zendo (meditation room or spot).
• Post your schedule around the house. (Zendo, bathroom, kitchen, garden, hall, work room…)
• Set up incense or scented candles*, if used.
• Straighten up and vacuum.
• Turn off your phone. (Completely. No vibrating. Lock it in a drawer.)

*Incense is useful to set up mindful, contemplative space, even if you rarely use it other times. Scented candles are a Roman Catholic approach some may prefer. As ever, spend money on the good stuff.

Preliminary thoughts:

• Prioritise sitting. There's a tendency to fudge on the meditation; to cut it down with too many work or study periods. But meditation is what sesshin is all about, and if you stiff yourself, you may not realise the benefits you seek. A half-hearted sesshin can even exacerbate unhappy states. When in doubt, err on the side of sitting.

• Morning meditation always sucks. You're sleepy, grumpy, lonely; the place is dark and cold; you have no clue why you thought this was a good idea. (This is just as true in the monastery. Aloneness is not the dependence of this co-arising.) But those morning blocks lay the foundation for the whole day. Sit them faithfully, regardless of mood.

• Work and study are also important. Have a minimum of one hour-long period for each. (Hygiene breaks and after-meal clean-ups don't count.)

• Recordkeeping is an ancient part of Zen practice, and it's important to log your own sesshins: what worked, what didn't work, any noteworthy divergences from the printed schedule, stuff to do or not to do next time. Don't forget to note significant moments, even if they're not relevant to future efforts. "Brilliant sunrise." "Fabulous sit after dinner." "Eggs have hatched in the nest by the garage."

• During sesshin, write notes on paper. If your sesshin log is on computer, transfer the comments to it next day.

• Keep old schedules and menus on file, whether hard or digital. (Ideally both.) This makes planning future sesshins a lot easier and serves as additional historical documentation.

• I find a formal nap productive. Always schedule the nap immediately after a sit. Sometime before lunch generally works best for me. You'll need a 10-minute passing period afterward to get dressed and wake up. Don't schedule a sit immediately after a nap; do something else between, even for 20 minutes.

• Work is generally best when it's simple and physical. (Cleaning up your actual desk: good. Cleaning up the desktop on your computer: bad.) Avoid work that requires communication, such as correspondence.

• Though it may appear physically undemanding, sesshin is hard on the body; by bedtime you'll be racked. You'll have better luck (and better meditation) if you schedule shorter sits than normal. My daily sits are forty to sixty minutes, but I limit them to thirty during sesshin.

• Back-to-back sits should be separated by ten minutes of mindful, low-effort movement, such as kinhin (walking meditation), yoga, tai chi, or stretching exercises. The point is to loosen up those joints without scattering your mind or stirring up your endocrine system.

• Be comfortable. Have a good cushion or chair, regulate light and temperature, deal effectively with hunger, fatigue, and thirst, so they don't disrupt the task at hand. Machismo and indiscipline are manifestations of the same delusion.

• The best study texts for sesshin are formal and classical. Commentary on the sutras or koans is perfect. Avoid stuff about Zen politics ("The Zen response to teacher misconduct") or worldly application ("Practice with pets"), unless they address challenges that prompted the sesshin. "Meditations" – lists of unanswered questions on a given theme, such as forgiveness or acceptance – are also good.

• A major difference between solitary and group sesshin is the need for sound. When you sit with others, there's a conversation going on, whether you hear it or not. Alone, the silence can become oppressive. To remedy this I listen to a podcasted teisho during work period (same rules as written study), and supportive music – chanting, singing bowls, shakuhachi, whatever works – while preparing a meal. Figure out what works best for you.

• End the sesshin on a sit, after evening hygiene and bedtime tasks. Go straight to bed afterward; if you futz around between, you may experience bad sleep or depression next day.

• Finally, don't give up. A difficult day often leads to a good evening. And a hard sesshin may lead to a good next day. You've lit a trash fire inside your skull; whatever happens next is not going to be uncomplicated.


But I've consistently found that a good sesshin, well-planned and carried off, is a rebirth. Even if you're a few days in labour.

The Buddha's Practice

"In the morning, I take my bowl and robe and go into the village to beg for food.

"After my meal, I go into the woods, and gather some grass and leaves to sit on. I sit with legs crossed and a straight back and arouse mindfulness.

"Then, far from sense pleasures and bad states of mind, I do jhana."

The Buddha, according to the Anguttara Nikaya 3.63 (1).

Graduation Meditation

I made this fistful of fudos for a friend's daughter who just graduated from high school. Graduation is an odd rite; we tell young people their lives have changed overnight, utterly and irreversibly, and encourage them, by our silence if nothing else, to party like all their problems are over.

We really don't do this in any other context. We celebrate New Year's, we celebrate weddings, we even celebrate graduation from other institutions, but we never say "all is attained!" This already bothered me when I graduated. I get it that we want to emphasise the accomplishment and celebrate the opportunities. I'm for that. But "free at last!" is simply – maybe even tragically – a lie. (As I put it myself all those years ago, the truth is more like: "Responsible at last". But I guess that doesn't look as festive on a cake.)

And now that I'm old, I've noticed something even more sinister: the near-universal insistence of grups that a person knows nothing at 18. Yet people that age are in fact not children. (Neither are 16-year-olds, or even 14-year-olds for that matter, but that's another rant.) I don't know if we do this because it makes us feel inadequate to see these dynamic young adults gallivanting about, or because we still have a retinal image of them in diapers, or maybe we just like wielding power over others. But 18 is grown-up. Newly grown-up, sure. Still in need of counsel, of course. But grown-up. (And let's be honest, homies: that second one never changes.)

Therefore, by way of conceding to this young lady some of the power that's hers by right, I included the following note:

At your age there are a lot of older people telling you that you haven't had any life experience, and therefore you have no wisdom. Now that I'm old, I can tell you that 18 is in fact not as much as 50. (And I'm beginning to suspect there may be numbers even larger than that.) But 18 is still a lot – much more than old people think. (Or maybe just more than they remember; the years take things away, too.) Fact is, I had wisdom at 18 that I've since lost, somewhere along the way.

So here are 18 fudos, one for each year of wisdom you've accrued. Hang them in places that are special to you, or will become special to you later; mark your own trail, blaze it for others who follow; give some to friends and strangers. They're yours to do what you want with.

Remember that the more abused the ring, the more power it has. Just like people. Some of these have added meaning as well. The diamond one recalls the Diamond Sutra. The square one proclaims the Four Noble Truths. The Chinese coin with cord in the colours of the Three Bardos of Death is a cemetery fudo. And the one with the broken ring and four Franciscan knots is my own proprietary design. All fudos say, "The world is full of bastards, but an army of compassionate seekers has your back." Mine adds: "… and they'll have to get through me first."

All peace and good fortune to you, young sister. No time for small minds; eyes on the prize.

Eighteen is enough.

Robin

PS: And if anybody still tries to tell you it's not, tell them you won't hear until they've made 18 fudos. That crap takes forever.

Are Teachers Necessary?

This is a long post. It needs to be. If you're a Buddhist, or just a fan of the Buddha, please read patiently; the topic is of importance to the worldwide Sangha.

Regular readers know that "no need for teachers" is one of my refrains. That's a given; I'm a hermit. Some of my ilk want all ordination – all teachers – abolished. In the words of one brother: "Burn down the monasteries. Flush 'em into the sunlight. Make 'em walk The Path."

But I have nothing against teachers, as such, or cœnobite practice. Too many of my friends have pledged their lives to it, taken rakusu, and credit it with their salvation. A central tenet of my own Rule is that apostasy doesn't nullify practice; hypocrisy does. The Buddha said that our paths are all our own. Earned over ten thousand lifetimes; bespoke to each of us; necessary to our enlightenment. Criticising the gait of others is a waste of Sangha, at best; at worst it's a kind of murder.

That said, I regularly run into monastery rats who are entirely comfortable telling me, with blunt satisfaction, that my hermit path is a conceit; that I'm not a "real" monk; that the word "Zen" necessarily means submission to a (living, human) master.

Then they smile indulgently, slap up a gassho, and bow deeply, murmuring something about "the Buddha".

Yeah, about that…

To take a page from my Christian brothers and sisters, "What would Gautama do?" Well, we can't know. We can know what he did, but even that we'll have to know in the koanic sense, because the answer is mu. Fact is, teachers were so important to the Buddha's enlightenment regimen that he never mentioned them, according to my unscientific, non-exhaustive survey of the sutras. (Note: I'm aware that some sutras aren't the authentic words of the Buddha. I'm also aware that the Buddha gave hundreds of sermons that haven't survived to our time. But if we insist on pitching legalities at each other, the sutras are all we've got. And you started it.)

So. Truth.

Almost all sutric occurrences of "master" or "teacher" refer to Gautama himself. (And Ananda, in at least one case.) In parables, "master" usually refers to an employer or householder. In any case, there are very few references to "Buddhist masters", and essentially none to what monks might "owe" them.

But the Buddha himself did have masters – two that he was willing to own – in his seeking days. One was Uddaka Ramaputta, a Brahmanic meditation teacher; the other was Alara Kalama, a hermit monk (oh, snap!). And in his first-ever teaching, he dismissed both as unnecessary.

Moving forward, in the Pratimoksha – regulations for Buddhist monks – he says:

All of you Bhikkhus [monks]! After my Nirvana, you should revere and honor the Pratimoksha. […]You should know that it is your great teacher, and is not different from my actual presence in the world.

Human teachers are not mentioned, even though he's literally laying down the law.

In a even more poignant moment, the sutras have this to say:

1. Now the Blessed One spoke to the Venerable Ananda, saying: "It may be, Ananda, that to some among you the thought will come: 'Ended is the word of the Master; we have a Master no longer.’ But it should not, Ananda, be so considered. For that which I have proclaimed and made known as the Dhamma and the Discipline, that shall be your Master when I am gone. [Emphasis mine.]

Oddly, the sutra then claims that he said:

2. "And, Ananda, whereas now the Bhikkhus address one another as 'friend,' let it not be so when I am gone. The senior Bhikkhus, Ananda, may address the junior ones by their name […] but the junior Bhikkhus should address the senior ones as 'venerable sir' or 'your reverence.’

Let me get this straight: this bizarre command ("after I die, stop following my lifelong example") was important enough for the Buddha to deliver on his death bed, in his final words to his sangha? Yeah. Bullshit. Just as the Gospels were trafficked to serve worldly interests, this document has been hacked. And not even skilfully; check out the very next line:

3. "If it is desired, Ananda, the Sangha may, when I am gone, abolish the lesser and minor rules.

So let's sum up these three paragraphs: "We have too many rules. My teachings are all you need. Oh, and some dictators, too." I'll say it again: Bullshit.

In fact, just in case somebody wants to set himself up as a dictator, the Buddha goes on in the fourth paragraph to make a very pointed last request, entirely consistent with his lived teaching:

4. "Ananda, when I am gone, let the higher penalty be imposed upon the Bhikkhu Channa."

"But what, Lord, is the higher penalty?"

"The Bhikkhu Channa, Ananda, may say what he will, but the Bhikkhus should neither converse with him, nor exhort him, nor admonish him."

Ouch! Why all the hate on this dude Channa? Well, Channa (Chandaka in Sanskrit) was charioteer to the young Gautama. It was he who took the adolescent outside the family compound, against his father's orders, to witness human suffering and ultimately abdicate his aristocratic position in favour of monastic practice.

According to tradition, Chandaka later became a disciple of the Buddha, whereupon, because of his personal relationship with him, he began to lord it over the other monks. As the Buddha's health failed, Chandaka let it be known that he intended to assume authority over the sangha after the Master's death. The Mahaparinibbana Sutta records the Buddha's reply: "As if." (Note also that the worst punishment the Buddha can conceive is simply not responding. Far cry from the shunning and vituperation some contemporary teachers call down on their critics.)

Another version of the same scene omits specific commentary on the Chandaka matter and cuts straight to the chase:

The Buddha further explained: "If there is anyone who thinks [after my death], 'It is I who will lead the brotherhood', or 'The Order is dependent on me, it is I who should give instructions', the Buddha does not think that He should lead the order or that the Order is dependent on Him."

Alright. But seriously, could there really be no sutra passages (besides the suspect Paragraph 2, above) that recognise the master-disciple relationship?

Well, here it says that those who tread the path of Enlightenment should support Dharma masters materially (the modern Buddhist notion of dana), "making sure they lack nothing". So such masters apparently exist. Yet they aren't owed obedience; that's a Confucian notion, foreign to the Buddha in every sense. It's also worth pointing out that of 36 instances of the word "master" in this translation, the other 35 refer to the Buddha himself.

In yet another sutra, the Buddha praises a Master Sunetto – who died long before his lifetime – in the Sermon of the Seven Suns. But again, he draws no parallels with his own programme.

In the Suda Sutta he compares the monk to a cook, who

…takes note of his master, thinking, "Today my master likes this curry, or he reaches out for that curry, or he takes a lot of this curry or he praises that curry. Today my master likes mainly sour curry... Today my master likes mainly bitter curry... mainly peppery curry... mainly sweet curry... alkaline curry... non-alkaline curry... salty curry... Today my master likes non-salty curry, or he reaches out for non-salty curry, or he takes a lot of non-salty curry, or he praises non-salty curry." As a result, he is rewarded with clothing, wages, and gifts. Why is that? Because the wise, experienced, skilful cook picks up on the theme of his own master.

This sounds thunderously similar to exhortations in Zen literature on the deference and service a monk owes his teacher. Ah, but there's more:

In the same way, there are cases where a wise, experienced, skilful monk remains focused on the body in and of itself... feelings in and of themselves... the mind in and of itself... mental qualities in and of themselves -- ardent, alert, and mindful -- putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. As he remains thus focussed on mental qualities in and of themselves, his mind becomes concentrated, his defilements are abandoned. He takes note of that fact. As a result, he is rewarded with a pleasant abiding here and now, together with mindfulness and alertness. Why is that? Because the wise, experienced, skilful monk picks up on the theme of his own mind.

So the master here is not a person at all. It's a metaphor for the relationship we should have with our own nature. That is, it's the same theme of personal autonomy that runs through the Buddha's entire teaching.

It's true that I didn't search every sutra in existence, and I'm certain a competent zendo lawyer could find one somewhere to build a case on. But after several hours of research, I found not a single Buddhic statement directing seekers to submit to teachers, masters, or abbots. According to my man Gautama, there are exactly three treasures:

1. Buddha – sole, one-time-only human teacher
2. Dharma – the universal Truth and master, accessible to all through meditation
3. Sangha – the community of seekers

Still holding out for categorical?

Yourself depending on the Dhamma, honouring it, revering it, cherishing it, doing homage to it and venerating it, having the Dhamma as your badge and banner, acknowledging the Dhamma as your master, you should establish guard, ward and protection according to Dhamma. (My emphasis.)

I've now dumped a whole truckful of electrons on this subject. Few readers will have made it this far; the Internet rule is "short and punchy". But this issue needs old-fashioned, grown-up attention. And the conclusion is cogent and irrefutable:

1. Teachers are not Buddhic.
2. Buddhists are not required to have teachers.
3. Those who do have teachers, are not required to marry them.

None of which means that teachers are "bad", in my opinion. I read copiously from the written thoughts of contemporary teachers, and listen to their podcasted teishos. Their wisdom and direction are a pillar of my practice. Further, the innovated master-student relationship that currently passes for mainstream Buddhism is rich and productive for many people. It's not in the sutras. But a thing doesn't have to be in the sutras to be valid; scripture never gets around to mentioning most of life. Finally, I find much in the monastery – itself almost entirely exsutric – that's powerful and effective. More that is, than isn't.

But external direction and ordination aren't necessary. Period.

(Photo of the Buddha in vitarka ["giving instruction"] mudra -- "talk to the hand!" -- courtesy of Aaron Logan and Wikimedia Commons.)

Not-So-Fast Kyôsaku

"Arhats, who have reached their last birth and think they are done with it all, are unable to raise their thoughts to supreme enlightenment."

-- Paraphrased from The Prajna Paramita Sutra on the Buddha-Mother's Producing the Three Dharma Treasures, or The Perfection of Wisdom in 8000 Lines, Chapter 2, Preamble.





(Photo of celadon arhat figurine courtesy of the Korean Copyright Commission and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: February fudo

(Twelve-strand kongo Diamond Sutra model.)