WW: Boletes by the trail

(I believe these are Suillus tomentosus. One way or the other they're edible and choice. We got a great harvest this year thanks to heavy rains at just the right moment, followed by several sunny warm days.)

Military Meditation

Some time ago I surfed into What You Need to Know about Mindfulness Meditation, an article made available to military personnel (and everybody else) by the US Department of Defense. It leaves me a little conflicted.

As far as the information it contains is concerned, there's little enough to carp about. Yeah, dhyana probably didn't start with the Buddha, but that's minor and arguable. And the whole thing has a pronounced "meditate to get stuff" bias, but let's be honest: much in the Buddhist press does as well. And we all first come to Zen to get stuff, though the delusion softens if we practice properly.

And that's what disturbs me about this piece. Because the fact is, if you're truly practicing Zen, it's going to get progressively harder to be a soldier. Right wing politics, nationalism, certainty, fear of authority – to say nothing of killing strangers in their own homes – are things it's difficult to convince Zenners to embrace.

Which leads me to wonder what exactly the DoD is selling.

The argument cœnobites perennially throw at eremitics such as myself is that Zen needs patrolling – that without ordained, presumably accountable leadership, anybody can sell anything as Zen. And that, we're told, leads to charlatans who mislead others, individuals who mislead themselves, and the general obfuscation of the Zen path through the Red Dust World.

None of which I dispute. Rather, I question the contention that ordination eliminates these pitfalls, that the Buddha ordained any authority but his own, or that anyone has a patent on enlightenment practice. (A conviction well-buttressed by my experience of those who claim one.)

But I gotta say it, this DoD article gives off a definite whiff of caveat emptor.

It's not that anything it says is wrong. It's just that I misdoubt its motives.

Which is also how I feel about Zen teachers.

I'm certainly not opposed to Zen practice in the military. To begin with, that profession destroys just about everyone it touches – at least when fully exercised – and that creates a howling need for clear-seeing and moral autonomy. And carried forward, a Zen-practicing army would soon cease to be one, which is the next step in our evolution.

But that's what bothers me. Because this writer never openly suggests just what the war industry's aims might be in promoting mindfulness. Probably not reasoned insubordination, I'll wager. Where secular authorities advocate meditation, it's virtually always about making individuals docile, so they'll continue to commit or tolerate acts Bodhidharma (a war veteran) would condemn.

One would like to believe that any attempt to harness Zen to such ends would backfire – that the practice itself would free practitioners from quack intent. Sadly, religion has never worked that way. Zen has been weaponised before, with karmic results that outstripped its epically-appalling historical ones, and it's currently being turned to similar ends in business, education, and corrections as well.

As a one-time convicted Christian, the fear that my current path will become as debased as the former is very real. This practice is vital; too vital to allow careerists to usurp its brand. That road leads to the utter annihilation of Zen, as it has other religions.

And the last thing we need around here is yet another cargo cult.

I hope military personnel, active and discharged, around the world learn about Zen; that those who are suffering know that it might keep them breathing; and that those who are in pain will give it an honest shot and see if it helps. Some of our best teachers came from that world, channelling the laser insight they scored waging war – and the iron discipline their instructors gave them – into kick-ass monasticism. (The two callings are remarkably similar.)

Because it's not that there's nothing soldierly about the mindfulness path. It's just that it leads to a diametrically opposite destination.


(Photo of the Ryozen Kannon, Japan's WWII memorial, courtesy of Bryan Ledgard and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Outback radio

(The transceiver is those two tiny stacked boxes beside the headphones. [The key is unseen behind it.]

Technology has changed somewhat since I was young, when a radio of this type was the size of a hatbox.

And we had hatboxes.)

Street Level Zen: Gates

"Gates can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference."

Bob Dylan








(Photo courtesy of Kouji Tsuru and Unsplash.com.)

WW: Afternoon on the Palouse Slope

Makers Make Makers

So I'm reading Adam Savage's Every Tool's a Hammer, an elaborated meditation on "making", that thing that makers do. (I only recently found out I'm one of these. Before that I was just, you know, making things.)

It's an engaging read; Adam's a philosopher of creativity, and his thoughts on the process of bringing inspiration from concept to object are sangha at its best. Scattered amongst the useful bits of shop protocol, such as the necessity of clamping your work securely so it doesn't kill you, are mindful contemplations on more fundamental topics. Of these, the one that struck deepest is his misdoubt of the "scarcity model".

I've touched on this subject before, but Adam's understanding of it is more concrete. Essentially, he says, some makers work in the assumption that resources are inherently scarce. Therefore, a prudent person hoards them, restricts their distribution, declines to admit surplus or divulge where it is. Adam suggests such people do this from fear that they will run out of whatever they need unless they stop others from getting some.

Nor does he limit his definition to the material. In fact, he scarcely – see what I did there? – mentions physical wealth at all. What mostly aggravates him is spiritual avarice: refusing to help, teach, respect, credit.

I too have often smacked up against this. A classic example is the person who won't share a recipe, on the belief that equipping others to prepare the same dish will steal his thunder. (Note that this excuse rests on two fallacies: that such people won't change the recipe, thereby protecting the author's "patent", and that a cook incapable of outdoing himself is master of anything.) You run into these blocked heads rather often in the work world, were they refuse to teach you their profession, or share trade secrets, or defend your beginnerhood from critics, on the alibi that they're nipping competition that would complicate their lives.

Not that competition doesn't result from a more generous view. But I've yet to see a situation where you can really quash it by cynical means. Childishness on that level, though our culture implicitly endorses it, fences you off from the very resources you yourself must have to compete successfully.

At base, this scarcity model is the origin of the transmission hang-up in institutional Zen. That's the policy whereby only certified "dharma transmitted" gurus are allowed to teach Zen. By extension, all talking about Zen then becomes "teaching", so the rest of us just have to shut up.

To be honest, if it weren't for that second assertion, I'd have no problem with it. "Teaching Zen" puts others at risk, while endangering the teacher's own karma, which is why I'd advise anyone considering it to stop considering it. (And while we're up, if anybody out there takes this blog for "teaching", knock it the hell off before we both get hurt. )

Basically, the fear is that free agents would muddy the water, obscuring access to enlightenment. Trouble is, this scarcity dogma bulldozes 99% of our wealth into a big pile and sets it on fire. So Adam's right: such "scarcity" is manufactured.

It also undervalues sangha, as it posits that without certified instruction, students will fall willy-nilly for false and/or abusive authority. I'll see that and raise you this: when the Sangha replaces blind faith with caveat emptor, fools and scoundrels will find us barren ground indeed. Because dharma-transmitted fools and scoundrels abound, shielded by the Confucianism that's crept into our religion over the centuries.

Adam further suggests that far from establishing security, such attitudes actually impoverish. He's right. There is no scarcity of wisdom, insight, or compassion in Zen. We enjoy boundless wealth, in the millions who have trod and are treading the Path in earnest determination. What mind could reject such a windfall?

The essential quandary is not simply that no-one has a patent on the Dharma; it's that all of us are still not enough. We must have what everybody brings to the zendo. Bare minimum.

In biographical passages, Adam recounts many mentors, of various walks and origins, who put up with his beginner pestering, or calmly watched him make mistakes and then told him why his stuff didn't work, and one senior technician whose elliptical teaching method, by Adam's telling, was as koanic as any Ancestor's. All of which has inspired him to give in kind, now that he's a lion of the maker world.

The fact is, the most important thing makers make is makers.

(Photo courtesy of Richard Greenhill, Hugo Eliasand, and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Repurposed bird feeder