Thursday 28 April 2022

Too Important To Sell

Colorful Ferris wheel

A few years ago I read a Brad Warner post about getting others into Zen. Brad was typically circumspect on the notion, but he did admit to having attempted it from time to time. Which rendered me thoughtful.

I've never wanted to do that.

That's partly why my blog is simultaneously so prickly and largely devoid of any basic information about Zen. Aside from the fact that most of the text here is addressed to me, I've always imagined that what supplementary audience remain are fellow seekers, either already practicing Zen, or at least otherwise self-motivated to read it.

Any outreach I picture for Rusty Ring is limited to comforting members of my own sparse and scattered tribe, and giving open-minded others a balancing perspective on Zen convention. Thus my readers are generally friends and companions from the first visit, and nobody in need of or open to conversion.

This turns out a practical editorial as well as spiritual policy, since in the past 12 years exactly one werewolf has honoured my comments section with his or her gory theatrics. I've sometimes been savaged off-site – when I've participated in any Zen discussions there, which is rare – but at risk of a jinx, that one troll, several years back, is the only one I've seen.

It's just that, if you aren't selling anything, you don't attract much attention.

Now, if I hung out a shingle proclaiming COME HERE FOR ENLIGHTENMENT, or I CAN SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS, I'd be all up in readership. And, if I monetised, money.

And then my threads would totally be stuffed with people foaming at the mouth, rabid to debunk me. Which would lead to more publicity. Which would bring more readers. Which would score me more money.

What it wouldn't bring any of, is enlightenment. Not for me, not for my followers, not for the world at large.

This suspicion of apologetics is why Zen frowns on evangelism. Because the Christians have it wrong; you can't force salvation on others. You can't talk them into it, trick them into it, shame them into it, or even just sincerely hand it to them.

They won't take it.

The best – and I mean the rare and absolute best – that evangelism can accomplish is to cash in on the weak and desperate, those sentient beings so damaged and disoriented that they can't tell the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit.

I took the Zen path because I had to. World weariness had rendered my life unliveable, and it was this or jump off a chair. So I went looking for a practice.

Not a treatment. A task.

Nobody had to doorbell me or buttonhole me or altar-call me. I've endured all of that before. (Fortunately I'm of a nature to appraise rather than believe.)

Unless you come to enlightenment practice on your own road, for your own reasons, under your own steam, you can't pull it off. Instead you'll be recruited, distracted, and used up by unenlightened others.

That's why our monasteries make you kick down the door to get in. And why I write an underground blog that prospective readers must expend effort to find, and why I'm delighted to talk with interested parties about Zen, but usually end up advising them to stay on their existing path, unless getting off this Ferris wheel – which is the point of Zen practice – is all they want to do.

'Cos otherwise you're wasting your time and Zen's.

And both of those things are too important to toy with.


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Thursday 21 April 2022

Boiling Water

Kaz dağı semaver

The didactic, the secular sceptic, and the Buddhist polemicist like to point out that bodhisattva mind is always in us, and it's possible to hear it even in the grief, elation, and tumult of society.

It's also possible to boil water in a paper cup. So what?


(Adapted from 100 Days on the Mountain, copyright RK Henderson. Photo of a busy samovar courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Thursday 14 April 2022

Hugest Buddhist


I'm told this is a fad in China now. That first glance is a bit revolting to round-eyed sangha, but as I understand it, this desktop-sized sculpture sends folks into uncontrollable fits of laughter in the Middle Kingdom.

What's the matter, don't get it?

Well, according to the Internet, when this lump of topical kitsch heaves into Chinese view, the observer immediately hears a voice say, "I'm the best Buddhist, simply the best Buddhist. Everybody says so. I'm like the Buddha of Buddhism. I know everything about Buddhism. I'm totally enlightened. Always have been. Ask anybody. You want Buddhism, you need me. Because nobody else has any. It's all me. I'm the hugest Buddhist. Simply the hugest."

In other words, this is a statue of my ego.

Strange; doesn't look a bit like me.

(Photo of unknown provenance.)

Wednesday 13 April 2022

WW: Lady fern sprout and scrambled egg crêpes


(To be specific: whole-wheat sourdough lady-fern sprout and scrambled-egg crêpes in a white sauce. Part of my annual spring-greens crêpe festival.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Thursday 7 April 2022

Practice Kyôsaku







"I don't seek to follow in the footsteps of men of old... rather, I seek the things they sought."

Matsuo Bashō






(Photo courtesy of Rawpixel.com.)

Wednesday 6 April 2022

WW: Hazel catkins

(Corylus cornuta. Open the photo in a new window for better effect.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.