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.)

WW: Red-eared slider

(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.)

Shikantaza Party At My Place

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.)

WW: Summer evening

Hermitcraft: Hermit Zabuton

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.

WW: Alien technology

(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.)