WW: Aboriginal fishing weight (found in surf)

Good Book: Zen at War (Second Edition)

Once upon a time a mighty nation considered itself the holiest, most righteous in history. The ruling class especially leaned heavily on religious rhetoric, invoking the name of a great prophet to defend its every worldly whim.

Then the nation began committing colossal atrocities against other peoples, and viciously repressing its own. And how did all of those pious believers react?

(Spoiler alert: not well.)

In Zen at War, Brian Daizen Victoria scrapes the stickers off many a smug Zen bumper. Taking Japanese Buddhism by the root he shakes it hard, and a lot of bitter fruit falls out. In the political history of our religion, once considered a seditious foreign cult in Japan, he finds pivotal concessions early teachers made to buy safety and comfort. Spooling forward, we watch these dubious innovations draw in all denominations, until the distinction between the Buddha Dharma and Japan's organic (and congenitally nationalistic) Shinto becomes academic at best.

Arriving at the fascist period and world war, we find virtually no Japanese Buddhists, Zen or otherwise, living the Buddha's teaching. Exceptions are either obscure or excommunicated. Meanwhile, Buddhist teachers kink like contortionists to make patriotism, emperor worship, and wholesale killing intrinsic to the Dharma.

Parallels with America scream in the reader's face. Reading Zen at War, I realised that the American mishmash of messianic nationalism and Christianity is nothing less than State Shinto. Where nation and culture are declared 'scripture made flesh', authentic religion is impossible. And just as a society that muddles God and Mammon castrates Christianity, so one that equates selflessness with service mutilates Buddhism.

The first edition of Zen at War concluded with an illuminating review of the ways that Zen is used to gain obedience in postwar corporate Japan, but the most powerful chapter is only available in the second. In "Was It Buddhism?", the author brings Buddhism forward from India, where it had already become a policy tool for the powerful, through China, where it acquired the relativism of Taoism and the paternal piety of Confucianism. (Deviations any honest Zenner must admit are now fundamental to Zen, pagan origin notwithstanding.) These he compares to the Buddha's actual teachings. For example, investigating sangha, a concept much cited in defence of priestly authority, Daizen notes:

The [Buddhic] Sangha was based on noncoercive, nonauthoritarian principles by which leadership was acquired through superior moral character and spiritual insight, and monastic affairs were managed by a general meeting of the monks (or nuns) […] All decisions required the unanimous consent of those assembled. When differences could not be settled, a committee of elders was charged with finding satisfactory solutions.

Daizen is a Sōtō priest trained at Eiheiji. He holds a master's degree in Buddhist Studies from Komazawa (Buddhist) University in Tokyo, and a doctorate in same from Temple. His andragogical résumé is extensive and tedious. In short, this is not the man to mess with.

But the work does suffer from a lack of editing (or maybe intrusive editing), and a tendency to beat certain points to death. Prominent Western Zenners, including Gary Snyder and Brad Warner, have challenged Daizen's indictment of some iconic figures, charging lazy scholarship and wilful misreading. I'm not qualified to have a side, but in the end, the fact remains that no ordained Zen teacher in Japan actively opposed the war until it was lost.

Aside from that, the book's greatest flaw is its title. Zen at War is actually about all Japanese Buddhist denominations; it takes Daizen half the book just to get around to Zen. All of it is relevant and readable, but I found the Zen monk in me saying, "C'mon, Brian, get to the Zen already!"

But such objections pale before the historical significance of this groundbreaking work. The Japanese edition has already inspired unheard-of public acts of contrition in several influential Zen lineages; this, in a culture even less inclined to apology than Western ones. Zen at War has changed the way Japanese Zenners see themselves. Whether it will change their behaviour as well, only time will tell.

Meanwhile, Western Zenners remain arrogant as ever. Perhaps if more of us read Victoria, we too will be inspired to confront some of the dubious assumptions we've imported whole-cloth from Asia, and so attain greater understanding of the Dharma.

WW: Seattle sunbreak

WW: Ten years ago this week I became a monk

WW: Buddha entered Nirvana on 15 February

St. Valentine's Kyôsaku

"We are all surprised when when we read a story about two people who fall in love and marry even though one is terminally ill. It seems to require great love and courage to risk such a frightening and painful journey, to decide to love someone who you know will be taken from you soon. Yet isn't that what all of our lives are? We live day after day, and love other human beings with a tenuous hold on life. Doesn't this require great courage and love?"

Philip Martin

Hermitcraft: Fudos, Pt. 3: Lord of the Rings

One day's walk in town

Collecting fudo rings is an object lesson in greed. First you pick one up by chance. Then you become acutely aware of every washer in the vicinity, in service or out. Soon you're dodging four lanes of traffic to get to the hardware on the median, and waiting for the guard dog to round the corner so you can scale the truck yard fence. When you start fantasising about the explosion at the fuel dock that would score you those awesome mooring rings, you officially have a problem.

Fact is, life is full of rings. Mostly washers, with a scattering of et ceteras. And there's nothing like that Epic Find. The rust-latticed, potato-chipped gutter washer; the big bronze bearing; the giant log boom ring. Ask any birdwatcher or ham radio operator: these things can put you in a good mood for days.

Where to look

Collecting beach rings

The short answer is "everywhere," but some wheres are more generous than others.

o Any place work is going on. Construction sites are good. Demolition sites are better. Where machinery is parked or repaired, it's "eyes low." Breaking yard? Jackpot! Public works are gold, too. You can find serious iron around recently replaced light poles, highway retainers, etc.

o Rich = stingy. (As much with rusty washers as everything else.) Poor neighbourhoods offer better pickings, because we fix our own crappy cars outside our own houses. And our streets are paved and swept less often. If you find yourself on such a street, watch it. (The street, I mean.) Hardship, depression, and desperation generate fudo rings. I could get all metaphorical on your backside, but you get it.

Street lamp base

o Cities. Best prospects: former accident scenes, busy corners, industrial districts. Any place the road is rough shakes down hardware by the tonne.

o Beaches, though you have to have the tools to free them. But the selection is excellent: chain links, net rings, malleable dock washers, and all manner of small hardware. All generally well-harmed by Earth's least metal-friendly environment.

o The entire nation of Guatemala. The combination of alleged "streets", screaming poverty, and perpetually reconditioned buses, trucks, and tuk-tuks fills your pockets daily with the strongest, bad-assedest fudo rings on the

Fifteen ring day
in the city!

planet. I swear it rains bodhisattva bronze in that country.

Wherever you find them, gathering up fudo rings is fun. It makes every walk a potential catch, and turns boring, drab, depressing surroundings into pastures of plenty. It also makes for great stories. Remind me to tell you about the time a winter storm threw up a seine that had sat on the sea floor for decades, so impregnated with sand that it ruined three pairs of shears before giving up a grapefruit-sized black concretion that I had to kiln in the woodstove overnight before smashing it with a hammer to discover five breathtaking rings.

Never mind; guess I already did.

Four hours' work on the beach