(As a warm-up for building myself a new radio, I put this together. It's for securing a printed circuit board while soldering in the components. Dozens of other gadgets accomplish this – I own at least three besides – but this design has the advantage of holding the work so low that the builder can steady his or her wrist on the bench while applying the solder iron. Very useful when populating small, crowded PCBs.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
Long ago, in the first years of my Zen practice, I encountered a teaching that's remained in my mind through the intervening years. Unfortunately, despite my obsession for note-taking and record-keeping, an hour of combing through my files hasn't produced line or author.
So I'll have to report both from memory as best I can.
I recall that the source was a modern Chinese Chàn teacher, born in the 19th century. This makes him almost certainly Xuyun; the more since in the course of my digging I discovered in an early practice folder a text file of his teachings. Sadly, this wasn't one of them.
Whoever it was, the Chàn master in question had this to say:
"You ask why there are so many schools of Chàn. [This was possibly translated as 'Zen'.] It is because people have different natures. They require different practices. That is why there are so many schools of Chàn. It takes that many."
At the time, having just taken the Zen path following a lifetime of convicted Christianity, I was impressed by the wisdom and generosity of this pronouncement.
As my practice grew deeper and broader, I would come to see the very soul of Zen in it.
Such freedom from jealousy and turf-warring is rare; nowhere more so than in religion.
In the course of my subsequent Zen vocation, I've been a bit disappointed, if not surprised, to find that this is not in fact our party line. The truth is, though Zenners score higher on the many-paths test than Christians (low bar that they are), our reflex too is to malign teachers in other schools; even other teachers in our own.
The error in this goes beyond fundamental insecurity and egotism. At the end of the day, like all we purchase with that two-sided coin, it deprives us of wealth.
Because other schools, lineages, denominations, even faiths (that's right, I said it) encode centuries of enlightenment instruction. Buddhism isn't like other religions; our founder said enlightenment comes of action (meditation), not faith. The clear implication is that the world is full of people very unlike us who must nevertheless be enlightened.
And that means an honest seeker won't simply tolerate superficial differences in doctrine and dogma, he or she will welcome them as a blessing, delving into them to profit from the insight they embody.
In the end, I'd suggest we go Xuyun one better:
Given that our species is still stumbling around in the dark, 2500 years beyond the Buddha, screaming war and weeping bitter tears, it's obvious we don't have enough schools yet.
(This guy came by one hot afternoon last July and spent the evening in the backyard.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
(Iconic Bellingham viewpoint, looking out over the northern Sound, San Juan Islands, Canada, and Olympic Mountains. Constructed while I was in college at the foot of the hill, sometime in the Pleistocene Era.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
The
Sword of Righteousness has a D handle.
Wu Ya's commentary:
Only true warriors can lift it.
(Photo of a Land Girl at work courtesy of The Imperial War Museum, the UK Ministry of Information, and Wikimedia Commons.)
(While walking off-trail in a local forest park, I was surprised to find this sprinkler head in the middle of the woods. After some contemplation, I realised it must be part of a fire-suppression system.
The entire forest is probably sown with these at regular intervals, most camouflaged by fallen vegetation. I'll warrant we'll see a lot more of this kind of thing as global climate disruption intensifies.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
"If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him."
This well-worn Chàn koan, attributed to Linji Yixuan, has the sting befitting the ancestor of Rinzai. (Which word is just "Linji" pronounced badly.) Down the generations, this single sentence has attracted a wealth of commentary in the Great Sangha, and has to some extent even become familiar to the world beyond it.
Shunryu Suzuki – Soto priest, founder of San Francisco Zen Centre, prominent ancestor of Western Zen – inflected it in at least two directions: “Kill the Buddha if the Buddha exists somewhere else" (an invocation of things as they are), and "Kill the Buddha, because you should resume your own Buddha nature,” a timely reminder that you're the only one who can save you.
Others rush to insist that the Buddha in this directive isn't the actual Buddha, i.e., the man Gautama (though I believe he is, but more on that in a second). In this reading, it's really a warning against mistaken Buddhas: inferior teachers, your own delusions, received wisdom.
Perfectly sound, but a bit churchy for my taste.
So I've been turning this commandment in the light for about twenty years now. To me it does in fact refer to the historical Buddha. Because he's much more likely to hurt you than anyone else.
Some huckster in a plaid sport coat could con a minority of seekers with his pious salvation scams, but most of us will walk past that. No, to screw the majority, you need the real thing. That'll get us all worshipping when we should be practicing.
'Fore you know it, robes and gongs and incense will be all that's left of Buddhism. We'll be anointing statues, chanting names, venerating relics. At last some clever-dick will bust out the sutras and start telling us the Buddha said this and the Buddha said that, all in defence of this massive religious folk dance we will all have to complete before we're allowed to seek enlightenment.
Hell, with a little luck, we might even get the Buddha to straight-up end all Buddhism on Earth.
Which is why you want to kill that mofo good.
One good whop with your monk stick.
Because the fact is, Gautama left us 2500 years ago. He spoke his piece, left his treasures, and sensibly died.
Don't let a zombie eat your brain.
(Photo of an arrestingly Buddhic road in Uzbekistan courtesy of Arina Pan and Wikimedia Commons.)
