WW: Wild blackberries

(Rubus armeniacus.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Zen Judaism

In my university years I lived in a comfortably adequate basement apartment, where I developed a friendly rapport with my landlords – an elderly Jewish couple who lived upstairs. It was my first close relationship with a member of that community, and given our relative ages, over the next three years our interactions slipped into a familiar pattern.

Thus I am one of few goyim to have experienced the blessing of Jewish grandparents.

During that time I came to relish the Hebrew world view – so similar to my own Scottish and Old Settler heritage, yet so... not.

Upgraded, as it were. Different data, same conclusion. And with a wicked snap no Scot could despise.

So twenty years later, when, having become a Zen monk, I encountered the following online, I was primed to appreciate it.

The following is one of many well-shared excerpts from Zen Judaism: For You a Little Enlightenment, a short 2002 book by David M. Bader that took the early Net by storm. The site I saved my own text from has long since gone to the 404 meadows, but Heller Web Space preserves a close facsimile, with appropriately Web 2.0 æsthetics.

So enjoy this spin on the wisdom of the Ancestors, with refreshingly Nasrudinic clarity.

Zen Judaism
by David M. Bader

1. If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?

2. Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?

3. Drink tea and nourish life. With the first sip... joy. With the second... satisfaction. With the third, peace. With the fourth, a danish.

4. Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.

5. Accept misfortune as a blessing. Do not wish for perfect health or a life without problems. What would you talk about?

6. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single "oy".

7. There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited.And whose fault was that?

8. Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkes.

9. The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao is not Jewish.

10. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this, and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.

11. Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as the wooded glen. And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha with such rounded shoulders.

12. Be patient and achieve all things. Be impatient and achieve all things faster.

13. Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.

14. To practice Zen and the art of Jewish motorcycle maintenance, do the following: Get rid of the motorcycle. What were you thinking?

15. Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.

16. The Torah says, "Love thy neighbour as thyself." The Buddha says there is no "self." So, maybe you are off the hook.

17. The Buddha taught that one should practice loving kindness to all sentient beings. Still, would it kill you to find a nice sentient being who happens to be Jewish?

18. Though only your skin, sinews, and bones remain, though your blood and flesh dry up and wither away, yet shall you meditate and not stir until you have attained full Enlightenment. But first, a little nosh.


(Photo courtesy of Unsplash.com and a generous photographer.)

WW: Splooting bunny

(How hot has it been here? So hot that rabbits are "splooting" [hunkering down on cooler bare ground in plain sight of people and other potential predators] right in front of my front door. Such weather used to be highly unusual here in my hometown, but has become the new "normal" these last few years. One that neither I nor the rabbits will get used to.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Street Level Zen: Alienation

"How badly people want to talk to someone. They cannot make anyone hear them unless they scream, but they seldom really scream. Instead, they put letters in bottles and throw them into the sea of strangers, and the letters always seem to say, 'Save me, save me'."

Peter S. Beagle


(Photo courtesy of Šarūnas Burdulis and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: New teeshirt

(Each summer I gift myself a new teeshirt. This is last year's; I forgot to upload a photo of it then.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

The Gospel Koan

"One of the monks, called Serapion, sold his book of the Gospels and gave the money to those who were hungry, saying:

'I have sold the book which told me to sell all I had and give to the poor.'"

From the Tales of the Desert Fathers, recounted by Fr. Thomas Merton OCSO in The Wisdom of the Desert.



(Photo of a page from a 4th century book of the Gospels, handwritten in Coptic on papyrus – perhaps the very book Abba Serapion sold that day – courtesy of the Chester Beatty Library, the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, and Wikimedia Commons.)

What the Buddha's Master Taught Him

Ānāpānasmṛti – zazen, more or less – was the practice the Buddha's own instructor taught. It's a fairly mutinous, fundamentalist take on the subject, for a time and place where meditation had, as Christian Meditation master Laurence Freeman would later warn, become freighted with liturgy and expectations.

To this day, similar straightforward, unmuddled models are typical of contemplative schools across religions. For the Great Sangha, the primordial source of instruction is the Ānāpānasmṛti Sutra, according to which the entire form amounts to following the breath and addressing bodily drives, with an eye to drawing them down to a functional minimum.

This is still canon Zen, with allowance made for minor variation among schools and individuals.

Of course, this being Buddhism, we also immediately undertake to audit proper application of this too easily-memorised method against a multi-level numbered diagnostic, to wit, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment.

Your performance steps include:

• Smṛti, or mindfulness, leading to consciousness of objective reality, and – in direct contradiction to current Zen teaching – contemplation of dharma teachings.

• Dharmapravicaya, or analysis, employment of which leads to insight.

• Vīrya, or disciplined perseverance (note the relationship of this Sanskrit word to "virility"), i.e., consistent repetition of sitting.

• Prīt, joyful transport, which happens if you're doing it dutifully. (And more importantly, doesn't if you're not.)

• Prashrabdhi, peaceful abiding, though that's the opposite of caring about literally any of this. Leading to:

• Samādhi, an abiding state of mindful awareness.

And finally:

• Upekshā, detachment. You no longer invest in winning or losing, unseduced by the myriad delusions of separate existence, material progress, or personal esteem. Also described as "the death of ego".

It's possible I was a bit irreverent up there, but in fairness to myself, there's just something absurd about "don't-knowing" in seven explicated stages; refusing to admit that out loud amounts to dishonesty. Still, as a rough guide, the Seven Employee Improvement Goals are worthwhile; informed contemplation of same can in fact keep your head in the game.

As long as they don't become the game.

And according to the Buddha, the practice of ānāpānasmṛti in this fashion ultimately leads to the Big W: the release from suffering.

Which teaching is exact, per my experience.

For short periods, anyway.

But I'm not done yet.


(Photo courtesy of Mattia Faloretti and Unsplash.com.)/span>

WW: Siamese friend

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.