I’ve found it's important to call yourself something.
In the first years of my Zen practice I was still a Christian, simultaneously integrated into a Christian and a Zen Buddhist community. Both were visibly annoyed at my insistence that I was both. (There’s no reason you can’t be, and I’m far from the first person to do it; prominent founders of Western Zen were Christian clerics.)
I should add that it wasn’t just immediately-interested parties (i.e., Christians and Buddhists) who took exception to my labels, or lack thereof. Pretty much everyone did. You’d be surprised how fundamentalist the non-religious are about the religions of others.
So at length I chose a side to identify with. It’s interesting to note that in so-doing, I did in fact largely drop the other side. I still get tremendous value from my 40 years of Christian training — I never repudiated anything but the magic stuff, which I’d already deleted from my Christian practice long before — but I now walk a squarely Zen Buddhist path. So that’s a comment on the power of labels.
It’s also noteworthy that as a hermit monk, I still catch the same sort of blowback, but about my practice model this time. Some don’t like it; if you’re a monk, you better have a monastery address and a dictator bossing you around.
So if I’ve learned anything, it’s the importance of inviting others to mind their own karma.
(Photo courtesy of Unsplash.com and a generous photographer.)
(I believe this is Trachemys scripta elegans, the red-eared slider, shot near the same containment ponds I found overrun with turtles last spring. This puts a new spin on our chelonian population boom, since sliders are invasive. From the looks of things, this one's a female on the hunt for a nesting site. The sandy, sunny, well-drained slope she's painstakingly scaled, through heavy brush and across well-travelled trails, is perfect for that.)
Zazen is hard because it's simple.
It's the nothing-to-learn that loses beginner and master alike.
We start off being told to clear our minds. Seems straightforward: just don't think.
But you will.
Specifically, you'll think about thinking.
Then you'll become upset with yourself (or if you're a teacher, your student). Which is just thinking harder.
Some folks get stuck there, circling that holding pattern forever. It's one of the Buddhist definitions of hell, but since we're born into that hell on Day 1, I'd call it a lateral move at worst.
At some point I decided to forgive myself for thinking – leering at the priggish monk with a smart-ass teenaged grin on my face – and my sits improved noticeably.
Now when thinking happens, I speak to myself in friendly, collegial tones. Then I return to breathing and sitting.
Sometimes I ease into a deeper state. Sometimes I go back to designing a new workbench. Sometimes I return to fear or pain. Given enough time, I'll eventually do all of these, and a lot more. Maybe enter kensho. Maybe talk out loud with others who aren't there, but still distract me.
Sitting is always worthwhile. Useful. This is hard for some to grasp. You have to see it from the cushion. There is no alternative, and there is no shortcut. No-one can hand it to you, or verify or disqualify it.
It is not transmitted.
But these days, as I enter the last phase of my life, I'm coming to shikantaza. That's the particular notion of zazen that Dōgen handed down to Soto Zen. The word is said to mean "just sitting".
Dōgen's standards are higher than the basic breathing drill. Whereas I've mostly used the breathing method – assume lotus, count one to ten, follow the breath – now fellow Soto-trained monks are recommending shikantaza as sole practice.
Especially those my age.
I haven't done a lot of that. Some, when breathing practice led me there. But shikantaza is devilish difficult.
To do it, you sit.
What? Aren't I speaking English?
You just sit. You don't try. You don't want. You don't aspire. You don't flee. You don't punish. You don't fear, honour, cultivate, or avoid.
Things around you do.
You, not so much.
You don't breathe. Something breathes; you let that breathe. No inventory. No supervision. No observation.
Stuff goes on. You let it go on.
Thoughts think. You let them.
Everything continues. You neither allow nor forbid it.
You have no attitude.
It's exhausting.
Now I see why my brothers and sisters waited till I'd walked this far before they began – gently, confidently – plugging the founder's teaching.
Because you have to gather a lot of nothing before you put it down.
When I get up after these new sits, I have no idea if any of it was worthwhile.
And I'm OK with that.
(Mudra of Great Buddha statue in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)
Red-letter day here at Rusty Ring: a new zabuton has been sworn in.
The old one, which has appeared on these pages numberless times (here, for example, with my zafu, or here, if you look closely at the upper righthand corner of the second photo), had been in service since I became a hermit monk 24 years ago, and I'm a bit heartbroken to set it aside. But the cover had become dirty and threadbare, and finally a dog tore a hole in it.
That last may sound a bit alarming if you've never seen the object in question, but I assure you: pets never missed the joke.
I got that zabuton for free from a person who no longer had a dog. And it worked great – ideal size and weight, highly durable, insulating in the winter and airy in summer. Together we travelled the continent, sitting indoors and out, keeping my physical plant in monastic trim without the least trouble or worry.
(My zafu, less than a year younger, also soldiers on, having as sole intervention been fortified about midway through by a tough, weatherproof cover. True to form, I usually protect that with a cloth shoulder bag, so that the whole looks like a bagful of laundry. Note to self: we need another bag to protect that bag with.)
Any road, just as my winter robe began life as an old fleece bathrobe, I sit zazen on a dog bed. The scepticism this raises in certain quarters is worth the paltry money such kit costs. Welcome to eremitical monasticism, bitches.
But it was time for a new meditation mat, and two decades of experience has taught me that the dogs are right: this-here is what you want. Still, you'd be amazed how broad is the canine mattress market, in every sense: colour, design, shape, expense, comfort… even dimensions vary remarkably.
You gotta know a lot about pet supplies to nail this one. Especially these days, when it often must be purchased sight-unseen.
In the end, after a mere six months' research, I got what I needed. The new pad is a little loftier and has a textured checkerboard cover (see photo) – ironic echo of certain so-designated zabutons meeting fewer criteria and costing four to twelve times more. (Set me back twenty-five dollars Yank, for those playing at home.)
One thing I do miss is the extra 4 inches; where my old zabuton is 28 inches by 35, this one is only 24. However, there are some good reasons for a shallower mat, chiefly that they're less obstructive in a multiuse room; fit more readily into many outdoor sites; and are easier to transport by car.
As for wear or ergonomic issues, only time will tell. But for the moment, it's holding lotus admirably.
So if you need a zabuton but can't afford spiritual materialism, come join me out here with the dogs.
Company's better, anyway.
(So the other day I look out my back window and see what appears to be a cloud of stars on the ground beside the highway. A field glass survey establishes it as alien technology, apparently blown down the road for a considerable distance before getting wrapped around a power pole near my house.
Cognisant of my civic duty, if somewhat nervous about radiation, I climbed the bank for a closer look. And that's how I came into possession of a perfectly intact 4X8 sheet of mylar.
I immediately brought this home and smoothed it out on the floor, during which time it sparkled ardently each time it came into contact with starlight. The substance is also ethereally light, sailing around the room on no more than the draught from a partially open window – fully consistent with its interplanetary itinerary. Finally, note that the entire film was once folded to geometrically exact measure, likely to save space in the flying saucer.
I have no idea what its creators use this stuff for, though intuition suggests a possible connection with small princesses. However, in the absence of frosting or other as-yet undetected residue, we must content ourselves with storing this curious if somewhat alarming find in a sterile environment until a use for it can be determined.)
(Foxglove [Digitalis purpurea] is a common weed of the North Pacific slope. While non-native, and virulently poisonous if eaten, it's generally escaped the "invasive" label. I'm not entirely sure why, but it probably has much to do with the fact that it has a pronounced tendency to colonise poor, erosion-prone soil snubbed by other plants. This landslide site in the bluffs above the beach is a good example.
That, and its singular beauty, may have earned Digitalis a measure of tacit support here.)
