Street Level Zen: Progress

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

Albert Einstein


(Photo courtesy of Michael DeMarco and Unsplash.com.)

WW: Rose campion

(Silene coronaria. Snapped on slide spoil at the base of a Puget Sound bluff and entirely unretouched. Neither native nor quite invasive, this beautiful Eurasian blossom is common on poor, disturbed soil in this habitat.)

Yogi Berra-roshi

Major League baseball player and manager Yogi Berra was an iconic figure in the America of my childhood. Not so much for his stats, though they were impressive, but for his way with language. Several of his declarative statements – "It ain't over 'til it's over;" "It's déjà vu all over again;" "When you come to a fork in the road, take it" – have become clichés in American English, declaimed by speakers who neither realise the syntactic complexity in what they've just said or know who they're quoting.

And there are many more of these Yogiisms. So many that entire books, and even websites, are given to preserving this wisdom that flexes so many neurons we seldom use. But at least one of Yogi's aphorisms has always intrigued me.

"We made too many wrong mistakes" was his response to a journalist who asked why, in his opinion, his team had lost a game. It got the usual good-natured laugh from fans, but I maintain this is perfectly logical and not a malapropism at all.

Because mistakes are not created equal.

Sometimes you defer to another's opinion, even though you know his or her proposal is non-performing. In other moments you allow your own arrogance or apathy to determine a course of action without due consideration. Or you fall back on a method that already hasn't worked several times, in the lazy hope it magically will this time.

These are wrong mistakes, made against better judgement or scruples, arising from beginningless anger, greed, and ignorance, predisposed to fail or complicate other issues.

Then there are instances where you try a thing that should theoretically work, though you can't control all the variables. Or you press a strategy that's borne fruit other times, only to discover its limitations. Or you set an untried course because the standard response is unethical. You take your best shot, something else that might work, in the conviction that the experience will ultimately lead to a principled alternative, whether the present experiment pans out or not.

Those are right mistakes. You make them in good faith, for good reasons. And pass or fail, that kind of mistake clarifies data and contributes to future endeavours.

They are in fact the driving force of progress, without which we stagnate and die.

So I try to apply the Yogi Principle to innovations in my Zen practice. Am I yielding to a wrong temptation – how does it fare on the Eight Worldly Dharmas scale? – or is my proposed change grounded in a genuine desire to optimise my well-being and that of others, now and in future.

It's easy for eremitical monastics to wander into cul de sacs, given the paucity of human sangha around us. So you've got to keep your own ego in view, and that of teachers and other influences.

Because ninety per cent of this game is half mental.


(Photo of 1951 Yogi baseball card courtesy of Bowman Gum and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Kintsugi bowl

(A few years ago my sister gave me a kit for making a kintsugi bowl, probably because she knows how deeply that artform speaks to me. I greatly appreciated the gift, but for one reason and next – mostly that the skills required are fairly wide of my talents – I ended up offering it to an artist friend, in a bid to fulfill the kit's destiny. My friend agreed to assume this responsibility on one condition: that I take ownership of the finished article.

And now it resides with me.)

WW: Skeleton house

(The past decade has seen the rise of a strange new cult where I live: skeleton houses. Why here? Why now?

I don't know, but I'm about certain it started with people erecting prodigious osteology in their yards for Hallowe'en and then deciding just to leave it up year-round and skip all that work in future. Like they started doing with Christmas lights when I was a young man – up and lit all year.

And now these spooky giants haunt the county. Every time I pass a new one I'm back in the rollicking days of the Black Death, when we carved, painted, and drew Old Boney everywhere to remind the rich and powerful what their riches and power are worth.

Hmm. Might've answered my own question, there.)

The Path Not Taken

In his most famous apothegm, Christian apologist GK Chesterton wrote:

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”

Chesterton was not an outlying critic. He was in fact a prominent ecclesiastical conservative, the sort of religious influencer I grew up calling a "professional Anglican". All of which raises the impact of his observation, accepted on my watch as indisputable.

It's also true of Zen. Over the generations, we too have found every means to occult our stated programme, which is powerful and effective, but leaves little leeway for human ambition. So we've reintroduced rank to our true men of no rank, ritual and liturgy to a path our ancestors named "meditation" (the literal translation of "zen"), and absolute religious authority to a practice our founders gave one objective: to transcend separation.

This walking repudiation of Bodhidharma first takes us into the morass of peer pressure, where sitting with the cool kids (pun intended) is the first, and often only, goal of our organised sangha. Along the way we've come to teach that our koanic texts are contextual rather than literal, and that the notions and forms of practitioners in the past are inapplicable to us, in our advanced and complicated time.

To state it plainly, those outside our tribe are judged separate from, and irrelevant to, us.

We converts to Zen from Christianity have already seen this movie in Technicolor, yet we don't seem to recognise it in this theatre. (Op. sit. Shadow Gospel, c.f. parable of man living with demons @Matthew 12:43-45.)

But let's be real: there is not now, nor has there ever been, on this suffering rock, a religion that fewer than 99.999 per cent of declared adherents didn't blow off, in full and in part, while brandishing random flecks of rhetoric to justify their egotism. Zenners are not the only, nor indeed are we the worst, examples, and neither are our Christian brothers and sisters.

But I must say, though I participate fully in the ebullient apostasy, actually practicing Zen – that's Zen, as our Ancestors taught – has never failed to push me further and faster along than anything else. That's why my hermit practice has been in a constant state of Reformation since it was… well, formed. Where enlightenment practice is concerned, I'm always grilling myself about my fears, my ambitions, my motivations, and my actions.

And even when I conclude that I can't resolve those questions right now – business as usual here at Sabita Yubiwa-ji – I keep my windows open, and that fresh Vatican II breeze blowing through my hut.

Because it does get stuffy in here.


(Photo courtesy of Thomas Quine and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Vertical tidepool

(This chunk of 30-inch concrete culvert was probably rolled off a construction barge and into the bay as surplus at some point in the past. In the meantime it's been colonised by a wealth of sea life, including most conspicuously at least two species of starfish. The community is located well below mean low tide, and only fully exposed at minus 4. I'll bet it's a great visit at high tide, with diving gear.)

Anitya Pool

A museum is an exhibition of things that aren't broken yet. They're interesting to us because they've made it this far, and we're holding our breath to see how much longer they'll exist.


(Photo of Imperial War Museum, London – specialising in exhibits that had even longer odds of reaching our time than most – courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Mystery mostly solved

(Last week I posted a photo of feathers mysteriously left by an extremely fastidious predator. Just a few days later I found, 50 yards away, the above remains. So whatever left the feathers seems only to have plucked its prey on that log before transporting it to a less exposed position to eat.

Still no skull, but most of the other bones are here. So though the exact culprit remains unidentified, given all the data points, I'm leaning toward a raptor. Likely a great horned owl or bald eagle.)

Skilful Inaction

This is a meme that's been going around. Or rather, it's an artist's re-rendering of some AI slop that turned up in my social media.

Nothing makes my day like humans scraping AI content. I move we erect huge art centres that suck the electricity out of whole towns so legions of Homo sapiens can adversely possess mountains of AI data and use it to dominate the world.

Hey, folks: it's unethical to block that. Or even vote on it. It's business. Whatever that means.

Anyhow, I know a thing or two about religious faith. So let me reiterate what this meme is pointing out: your religious practice is about you.

What others do falls into the category of "stuff beyond my power". Whose power it falls into, depends on the worldview of your specific religion, but all of them teach that attempting to usurp that entity's sole right to order the universe is sinful.

The Buddhist term is "unskilful".

I'm not suggesting that Buddhists are any better at respecting that line than anybody else. Just that we agree with all other religions that patrolling the morality of others is useless, pointless, and a giant waste of time and effort you were supposed to spend patrolling your own.

When you ignore that teaching, you land in the red column as just another problem that whatever you call the Source of Creation must solve.

Which It tends to do by eliminating the context that gave rise to the problem.

In this case, Homo sapiens.

Now, we could get all Jesuit about this commandment: which behaviours we may morally patrol, which we may not, and how many hypocrites we can dance on the point of a pin.

But the principle – that religious practice is a precept that's broken when forced on others – is universal.

So it's safe to say it's enlightenment.


(HI-generated meme courtesy of Reddit user u/Ampersand37.)

WW: The Case of the Absent Hen

(A few days ago I was walking around a crumbling, overgrown abandoned farm near my house when I happened on a mass of feathers piled on a fallen tree trunk. Even more intriguing: no sign of their owner. No bones, no flesh, not even blood. Just a nearly complete, completely empty, suit of feathers.

I can't think of a local predator that surgical, though my experience in such forensics is far from exhaustive.

On another account I'm more confident: these are hen feathers. So whoever this neat and thorough raider was, he or she will have come over, under, or through the fence just out of frame.)

Rock Groups 2026

Here meet we again, at the end of another July, and I still haven't dropped the annual list of rock groups. (For the uninitiated, the meaning of that incoherent statement will be found here.)

So I'm going to let the embedded link above do the heavy lifting and dive right into this year's harvest.

Rock Groups Waiting to Happen, 2026

Hellbender
Arrow Stork
The Socks (nerd rock)
The Gorn
Hellschrieber
The Fulfillment Centre
Catflap
Zingibro
Die Schreibtischtäter
Knife
Aftermath
Rolling O
Fork
Medium Large
Little Tiffany and the Friend Zone
Shakuhachi
Stryx
Point No Point
Fox 3
The Shoals of Heaven
Widdershins
Yclept John and the Bystanders
Whackbat
Tigidou
Racer X
Mzungu
Roland
Letter Man
Spearcat
Pterry and the Pterydactyls


(Photo courtesy of Kameron Kincade and Unsplash.com.)

WW: 2026 teeshirt

(Here's this year's teeshirt. I suspect fellow meditators will get it.)

Words To Live By

"If you find life is whizzing by you, move away from the urinals."

Me, channelling Bashō.


(Photo of Jin dynasty chamber pot courtesy of David Straub and Zhangjiagang Museum.)

WW: Great horned owl tail feather

(I found this great horned owl [Bubo virginianus] tail feather on the trail a few weeks ago. Note its frayed tip in the close-up below. Flight feathers of all members of order Strigiformes – the owls – have this kind of tip, which softens their aerodynamic slip, resulting in their owners' famously silent flight.

Great horned owls are native to the Americas, where they are present through virtually all of subarctic North America and a great swath of South America. Here on the North Pacific coast, their classic call – "Who died today? Who? Who?" – is a common feature of the night.)

Good Podcast: Guo Gu

It's always illuminating to hear from Chinese teachers and students.

We tend to forget that Zen is a mispronunciation of Chàn, a practice model that originated in China. Over the centuries, given the vicissitudes of history, Chàn faded mostly away as an active denomination, but a 19th century restoration movement has steadily gained ground.

My own admiration for Chàn – historical and current – is a matter of record. Encounters with our rootstock have informed my practice from the first, providing depth and balance to an otherwise comparatively narrow Japanese schooling. It's worth noting that Dōgen himself was a Chinese-trained bilingual sinophile, and while he dedicated his life to founding a self-sufficient Japanese Chàn lineage, he had no intention of rejecting its Chinese heritage or principles.

So it's heartening to see disciples of modern Chàn show up in Zen circles.

The above teisho, delivered at San Francisco Zen Centre on 16 June 2026 by Chàn teacher Guo Gu, is an excellent example of the sort of guidance we lost when our ancestral tradition went 404, and the wealth we're regaining as it returns. (It may help that Guo Gu's path to enlightenment practice reflects those of many ancient Ancestors.) It's all here: the sardonic humour, the laconic common sense, the notion that we're our own worst obstacle.

All the stuff that makes Zen Zen, what.

Audio of this talk can also be accessed in SFZC's own online teisho archive, or downloaded to your desktop or mobile device wherever you get your podcasts.

Note particularly how Guo Gu clears the decks on the matter of shikantaza. Just that brief teaching advances my practice significantly.

WW: Native morning glory

(I think; Calystegia sepium ssp. angulata, if I'm right. It can be difficult to tell this from Calystegia x lucana, an invasive hybrid with a close European cousin.

I grew up calling these morning glories, but I see where county extension agents are now calling this hedge bindweed. Perhaps to reduce its charm(?). It's true the vines can blanket entire forest floors and become problematic in some locations, but the gleaming blossoms in the shadowy terrain it favours are striking and magical.)

Stuff Country Boys Know

"A man, he'll walk straight into Hell with both eyes open, but even the Devil can't fool a dog."

Earl Hamner, Jr.


(My favourite line from my favourite episode of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone. This notion of eternal reward is precisely mine as well, dogs intact. You can see the scene here; colourised, sadly, but the shifting tints do enhance the sense of bardo.

Incidentally, Hamner not only wrote all of Serling's "hillbilly" episodes, he was also the creator and narrator of another well-loved series from my youth, The Waltons. His is that voice that supplies the show's abiding soul.)


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

WW: Cooking is an act of love

(Long day in the kitchen.)

Traffic

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.)