Bashō's Frog

Matsuo Bashō (芭蕉) was a wandering Zen hermit of the Edo period, as well as an accomplished poet. Popularly considered the father of modern haiku, many of his verses are accepted as teaching in Zen circles today. The readily-memorised haiku format may drive some of this posterity, but there's no denying that Bashō's work often encodes palpable koanic insight.

Interestingly, his status as a self-trained free-range monk is rarely mentioned in our discussions of him, though we're happy to claim Bashō as the "Zen one" of Japan's Four Great Haikunists.

Thus do conservatives lay claim to the dissenters of yore.

Yet the eremitical nature of Bashō's practice is clearly evident in much of his work. Particularly his most famous poem, which is not merely lauded as Bashō's best, but in fact as the most awesomest haiku ever written, by anyone.

Feel up to it?

OK, clear your mind.

Ready?

the old pond
a frog jumps in
plop

That's it.

That's the poem.


Stuff to Notice

To begin with, this translation (Alan Watts, this time) is only one of dozens if not hundreds available; about which, more later. But I especially value Alan's take, emphasising as it does the humour that's central to Bashō's perspective.

Note also that while haiku – at least the classic kind – is supposed to contain references to nature, this one has nature coming out of its ears. I mean, there's no moonlight or cherry blossoms or summer rain or drifting snow. Nothing pretty, you dig. But nature? Yeah. It's got that in spades.

In his sardonic hermit way, Bashō seems to be saying, "I got yer nature, RIGHT HEAH!"

And then there's the Zen.

You may be thinking, "Big deal. Frog jumps in water. There's a noise. Nothing to see here."

And you may be right. I mean, you can get that kind of stuff anywhere, for cheap or free. Nothing unique is going on here. Nothing special.

Scared frog jumps in water, goes splash; not a headline you're likely to see in the Times.

Meanwhile, concentric circles are expanding in the water, lapping at the edges, returning through other circles approaching from behind. Frog resurfaces, climbs out. More circles. Wet frog drips, log gets wet, water runs off into pond.

The concentric circles expand and retract forever. The whole pond is implicated. And also its environs. And their environs. And all the environs beyond that.

And that's just one possible response. Maybe there's some suchness in there. Maybe some satori. Some admirers see all seven Zen principles of composition in these three banal lines.

Which is why they're sometimes called the most perfect haiku ever penned.

But not by its author, of course. We should also bear that in mind.


Language Matters

While we also remember language.

To start with, Bashō never wrote the poem reproduced above. And if by chance he had happened on it, none of that chicken scratch would have meant a thing to him. Because his text (per this source) was actually this:

古池や
蛙飛こむ
水の音

Which works out to:

furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

You don't need any Japanese to feel the visceral difference between this and literally anything it might have inspired in English. In fact, if you want to see just how thoroughly we anglophones can mess something up, check out the 32 translations catalogued here.

Robert Aitken's commentary on that page is also well worth the read, as is his stab at the source material:

The old pond has no walls;
a frog just jumps in;
do you say there is an echo?

And if you really want a plunge into the abyss, try Geoffrey Wilkinson, who starts with an acerbic comment on this whole frog thing, and then… well…

Go see for yourself. By the time Wilkinson's done he's taken you on a fascinating street tour of the haiku form and this one in particular, including several parodies by Japanese monks and poets over the past 500 years.

For example:

Old pond—
Bashō jumps in
the sound of water

– Zen master Sengai Gibon, 1750–1837.


Master Bashō,
at every plop
stops walking

– Anon, 18th century.


...while fellow hermit Ryōkan (1758–1831) had this to add:

The new pond—
not so much as the sound of
a frog jumping in


To say nothing of the fellow who wrote a limerick. (Yes, really.)

So if you're a fan of haiku, or hermits, or haiku-writing hermits, take a good surf into the lore of Bashō's frog. By the end of the evening you will have visited many corners of Zen, Japan, poetry, and history, and learned a great deal about the practice value of small bodies of water.


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

Timely Reminder

"Strictly speaking, every unenlightened practitioner is mixing their own convictions and belief systems with Buddhism. There is no way around it.

"We need to acknowledge that in ourselves and understand that our perception of reality is clouded by many things, some of which are ideologies and beliefs."

—This salient practice point courtesy of an astute sanghamate in Reddit group r/Buddhism/.

(Photo of torii gate [a Shinto symbol that's been widely embraced by Japanese Zen] at Mosteiro Zem Budista, Ibiraçu, Brazil, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Theory Kyôsaku

The theory is really simple.

The only problem is that theory alone will not help us to be content with our practice.

Although practice of the buddha way is supposed to be the easiest thing in the world, I think it is a fact that we are never quite content with our practice.

Why?


– Though unattributed in the source, this very Soto teaching apparently comes from Muhō Nölke, former abbot of Antaiji.


(Photo courtesy of Antoine Taveneaux and Wikimedia Commons.)

The Inevitable Spring

The warbler
wipes its muddy feet
on plum blossoms

–Issa


(Plum Garden, Kamata, by Utagawa Hiroshige, courtesy of Rawpixel.com.)

The Infinite Monk Theorem

"An infinite number of monks,
with an infinite number of zafus,
and an infinite amount of time,
would eventually get around to meditating."

Wu Ya

(This assertion has never been formally tested, but my suspicions are the results would be similar to those of another famous thought experiment.)




(Nineteenth century Japanese drawing of a monk meditating, or maybe sleeping, courtesy of the US Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons.)

Taking Delivery

It's been a long time since I had a dramatic sit – the thing Zenners call kensho. This is mostly down to lifestyle constraints that have made practice scattered in recent years, as well as the fact that I've been doing this for 22 years. After the first few, your brain acclimates to the meditative state, becoming simultaneously more inured to and less precious about it.

Which is why the other night thrilled me as I've seldom been since those early days.

The set-up was predictable: I'd had an opportunity to sit regularly and deeply for several days, and also to sit outdoors, in a quiet, rural setting, which is always productive for me.

If the sea is also involved, so much the better, result no doubt of a lifetime as a bay boy, itself the product of my family's centuries-deep maritime tradition. And as it happens, I was sitting on a bluff over a particularly active passage – a narrow channel where the tide runs like a river, during a week of deep, still summer nights. But on the last one the temperature plummeted, a storm blew up, and I found myself sitting at midnight in a tearing wind, bundled to the chin. Still didn't help my hands, frozen in dhyana mudra.

I did this because I'm a macho Japanese-trained Zen hermit, determined to log half an hour of pointless suffering to prove my monastic manhood.

But that's not what happened.

Instead, my mind spent about twenty minutes (I imagine; could have been ten, might have been 50) confronting the gale, complaining about the cold, starting at alarming sounds soft and loud in the dark around me.

And then I slipped into The Zone.

My mind settled into an equanimous hum. My consciousness assumed high alert, a sort of excitement that's neither fear nor expectation, just… receiver-on. I thought nothing, but noted everything. The gusts iced my face, roared in my ears, yanked my clothes, tore branches off the huge firs around me, and I neither defied nor surrendered to any of it.

The storm, the night, the planet, and I, just, like, were.

It's been a long time since I saw that place.

Why I did that night, in that location, is an open question. Certainly, I was awash in 190-proof oxygen; the stuff was practically forcing itself into my lungs. And the very fact that the storm was an unremitting distraction probably made it a trigger; the symbiotic relationship between concentration and disruption being well-documented in Zen.

(This would be a good time to remind fellow seekers that your meditation practice is your own and so are the results. The cushion stories of others can infamously cue feelings of inadequacy and dissatisfaction, leading some to conclude they're no good at practice or not doing it right or using the wrong incense or whatever. If my account inspires you to go sit in a windstorm, and the result is nothing more than a head cold, it might simply mean that you have more common sense than I do.)

But one way or the other, I took delivery. Thanks for the encouraging experience. On to the next.


(A Storm Off The Normandy Coast, by Eugène Isabey, courtesy of The Eugene Victor Thaw Art Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Wikimedia Commons.)

Koan: Pacifying The Mind

Huike said to Bodhidharma, "My mind is anxious. Please pacify it."

Bodhidharma replied, "Bring me your mind, and I will pacify it."

Huike said, "Although I've sought it, I cannot find it."

"There," Bodhidharma replied. "I have pacified your mind."

(Wikipedia)


(Sesshū's 1496 painting of Huike begging teaching from Bodhidarma courtesy of the Kyoto National Museum and Wikimedia Commons.)

One Religion

I never get used to the fact that there's exactly one religion on this planet. Or humanity's eternal frantic protest that there are in fact many.

Convicted Christian for the first 2/3 of my life, the hypocrisy – worse yet, the casuistry – of that sangha was deeply troubling for me from the beginning. At long length I was convinced to seek better company, for my own welfare.

I was therefore heartened when, early in my subsequent Buddhist training, I encountered Zen priest and historian Brian Daizen Victoria, whose book Zen At War documents the way Japanese Buddhists abandoned their most essential convictions during WWII to embrace the horrors of Imperial Japan – even to the point of declaring Emperor worship, and all the murder and violence his servants demanded, the highest expression of the Buddha Way.

The willingness of a Buddhist cleric and scholar to "go there", as the Americans say, reinforced my faith in my new path.

Wrote Daizen:

My reading of Buddhist political history tells me that every time Buddhist leaders have closely aligned themselves with the political ruler of their day, the Buddha Sangha has become corrupt and degenerate... The Sangha's often slavish subservience to, and actions on behalf of, their rulers have resulted, in my opinion, in its becoming the de facto pimp and prostitute of the State.

Change Buddhist terms for Christian, and you get an exact description of what's happening in Christian-majority nations today, most notably the US and Russia.

I suggest that the opportunity this offers Zenners is to let go of our reflexive tendency to assume we're different from our Christian neighbours, and instead consider how our own institutions subtly or overtly call us to analogous conduct. (Yes-butting and what-abouting Daizen, for starters.)

And how must we act, in light of this insight?


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

Good Book: Inside The Grass Hut

Shítóu Xīqiān (called Sekitō Kisen in Japan) is having a moment. Fixture of contemporary Soto, his Sandōkai, a memorable exposition of the nature of reality, is chanted regularly in our sanghas (and name-checked here). Student of Huineng himself, my brother died in relative obscurity, and remained in it for centuries thereafter before his slim but weighty catalogue was rediscovered and he became a rock star in Japanese Zen. And now he's trending here in the West.

Which is why I recently read Ben Connelly's Inside the Grass Hut: Living Shitou's Classic Zen Poem. The work it explores – Song of the Grass-Roof Hermitage – is a largely overlooked classic of Zenlit, and another title in a peculiar hermit genre: the boy is my house awesome essay.

To structure his examination, Connelly simply lingers on each verse in turn, elaborating on its broader meanings. Soto priest at Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, he's a talented teacher working from a Taigen Dan Leighton translation, and his meditations on Shitou's pithy, economical dissertation on hermit practice are worthy companionship for others who aspire to it.

Connelly's own observations are couched in a classic Western Zen voice, upgraded with a deferential tingle of irony that fends off the piety that sometimes weakens similar efforts. His willingness to join the rest of us, and his gentle sense of humour, drive his philosophical points home in such a way that they highlight the inherent truth of the source material and invite the reader to delve along with him.

Witness this reading of a Zen moment from American pop culture:

In the movie I Heart Huckabees, an "existential detective" asks her new client, "Have you ever transcended space and time?" The client, bewildered, answers, "Yes. No. Uh, time, not space. No, I don't know what you're talking about." From a Zen perspective, all his answers are good, none of them are true, and the last one is likely the best."

(In fact, the client's whole response, if delivered while looking his opponent in the eye, would be an awesome dharma combat parry.)

This tone pervades Connelly's thoughts on all 32 lines of the poem; at two to three pages apiece, a rhythm that keeps things flowing and maintains momentum. As such it's a good example of what I call a "bathroom book" – a work you can digest in short, self-contained chunks at a regular pace, unhurriedly building an ecosystem from the images it contains. It's an ideal structure for conceptual musing. The text is light enough to be accessible to those unaccustomed to Zen thought – in fact, a great introduction to our intellectual tradition – yet meaty enough (if I may be forgiven the reference) to illuminate experienced seekers. In short, it has "instant classic" written all over it.

I found Inside the Grass Hut valuable support for hermit practice, and expect to reread, quote, and recommend it in future. If you're looking for an insightful Zen read that meets you where you are and continues giving as your practice matures, this book will set you up.

WW: Spring blessing

(Pieris japonica, known here as popcorn bush, is a popular landscaping shrub on the North Pacific Coast. Native to the same latitudes on the far side of the ocean, where climate and soil types are about identical, I'm told it fills whole ravines in Japanese forests. This must be brilliant to see, given its heady fragrance and dense sprays of sparkler-bright blossoms.

The early-spring show, and the fact that we had one at every house I can remember – always right by the front door – made this a favourite flower from early childhood. It's also a good carving and turning wood, fairly soft and light but fine-grained, taking an oil finish well; properties apparently unknown outside of Asia, given the absence of mention online, at least in any of my languages.)


Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

One-Legged Meditation

Though this seems at first glance avant-garde sculpture, in real life it's the famous one-legged torii of Nagasaki.

You can fill in its backstory yourself.

This Shinto devotional object was just another spirit gate, like thousands of others in Japan, until retrofitted for the Atomic Age by the US Air Force. The survivors took its still standing, despite the instant destruction of their entire city and the amputation of over half the monument, as an icon of hope. While rebuilding their home, they carefully preserved this gate, unmoved and unrestored, in front of the shrine that no longer existed behind it. (Though it soon would again.)

Today both are close-pressed by modern urban development, quite unlike the quiet neighbourhood in which they started, though neither has travelled so much as a yard since the day they were built.

And though all of this is as Shinto as it comes, I can't help but find commanding Zen significance in it, too.

To me, that war-veteran torii's silhouette – gates being a foundational metaphor for us, too – speaks to the nature of enlightenment practice. You practice where you are, how you are. If you lose a leg, you practice on the other.

And if an atomic bomb annihilates everything you know, you practice in the remains.

Nothing to do with machismo; it's just that you have no alternative.

I'm particularly touched by the Little Apocalypse – the tidal wave of concrete that drowned shrine and spirit gate in a matter of decades. Because while I struggle to imagine their Great Apocalypse – it's just more horror than my mind can honestly grasp – I've lived, and continue to live, the little one over and over.

Thus the sight of that silent, single-minded symbol of trust and true nature, standing up to its chin in a mindless race to oblivion, has special relevance for me. In that sense, notwithstanding religious distinctions or the brutality it's survived, we're comrade monks.

It's simply the most succinct expression of Things As They Are that I have found.

Today humanity is flirting with holocaust at least as hot as WWII. Given the geo-engineering challenges we choose to ignore; our growing embrace of political ideologies long proven suicidal; and the diplomatic tools we beta'd at Nagasaki, this could reasonably be the end.

It's difficult for me as a historian, a Zenner, and a decent guy, to remain in harness in the midst of our extinction.

So, what to do?

Well…

Sit down.

I'll also be keeping a photo of the one-legged torii of Nagasaki somewhere in the house, where I can see it.

(All photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Contemporary view also courtesy of Frank Gualtieri. View of torii after blast from bottom of stairs also courtesy of U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, 1945; Committee for Research of Photographs and Materials of the Atomic Bombing; Nagasaki Foundation for Promotion of Peace; and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. Torii's eye view of the devastated city also courtesy of 林重男 [Hayashi Shigeo].)

Merry Christmas 2023

On this Christmas of 2023, all of us here at Rusty Ring wish our readers the best and kindest of seasons.

Right in darkness there is light.



(Painting by Ohara Koson. Image file courtesy of Rawpixel.com.)

Don't Do Anything

As non-Vajrayana Western converts to Buddhism will tell you, we have a slightly awkward relationship with Tibet. Not that we have any real bone to pick with our Tantric brothers and sisters. It's mostly just a difference of style. Practice models in the three other common convert denominations – Zen, Vipassana, Theravada – are pretty stripped-down, with Zen probably being the most "gorgeous" of the very Puritan lot. Tibetan forms, meanwhile, are downright High Church.

More prosaic is the simple fact that the Dalai Lama is the only Buddhist most Westerners can name, and since our media regularly imply that he's the "boss of Buddhism", we're all generally believed to owe him fealty. Thus, non-Buddhists are often surprised to learn that I don't really follow the guy's news – he's fine as far as august spiritual figures go, but carries no greater weight with me than the Pope or other sincere religious celebrities.

Similarly, Tibetan Buddhist stereotypes often pass for Buddhist, full stop. Yet I rarely chant "om"; I don't own a copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead; my Zen teaching embraces transmigration (which I don't necessarily buy, either) rather than reincarnation; and therefore we don't believe past masters can inhabit children.

All of which to say, non-Tantric Neo-Buddhists tend to know fairly little about that tradition or its teachings.

So I was grateful when a fellow Mastodonian shared a particularly provocative passage from Tilopa, an Indian sage whose wisdom looms large in Tibet. Upon further exploration I learned that the posted lines are actually the heart statement of the great Tantra master's programme.

The interpretation presented can be traced to Alan Watts, and reads as follows:

No thought, no reflection, no analysis,
No cultivation, no intention;
Let it settle itself.

Certainly a Zen-friendly sentiment, in that we-say-these-things-a-lot-but-never-do-them kind of way. And other translations found elsewhere enrich the context:

Don’t recall.
Don’t imagine.
Don’t think.
Don’t examine.
Don’t control.
Rest.

A bit more Soto in flavour than Watts' Rinzai-esque lines, perhaps, consisting of nuts and bolts exhortations ("act this way") rather than a self-absent explication of phenomena. But taken together – as is usually the case with these two schools of Japanese Zen – they bring greater insight.

And finally, this fraternal take:

Let go of what has passed.
Let go of what may come.
Let go of what is happening now.
Don’t try to figure anything out.
Don’t try to make anything happen.
Relax, right now, and rest.

(Both of the non-Watts translations quoted here are the work of Tibetan Buddhism teacher Ken Mcleod.)

So I'm paying this forward, as a particularly valuable meditation for Zenners, regardless of source.

Because it's not just good stuff, it's Zen stuff. And also good Zen stuff.



(Tableau of Tilopa courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Japanese cherries

(This is the fruit of the Japanese cherry tree [Prunus spp.; Cerasus spp.], whose blossoms bring world-famous glowing colour to the north and south Pacific Rim in spring. Its fruit, on the other hand, is viewed as inedible; some authorities even insist it's poisonous.

It isn't. It just tastes bad.

The stiff, bitter flesh of Japanese cherries is indeed uninspired fresh fruit, to put it mildly, but they still have the vibrant colour and heady fragrance of their more palatable cousins. Hence, cooked well and sugared judiciously, they can yield a cranberry-like jelly that's not at all objectionable.

Here I've gleaned about 3 cups of them from a local tree; I plan to simmer them in cider to impart to it their colour and perfume, much as sorbs – a similar fruit – are sometimes used. Afterward, I'll probably make kvass from the cider.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

How Sudden Are You?

So another visit to the annals of early Buddhism has yielded a further bit of provocative trivia: subitism is very old. Possibly as old as the religion itself.

This contentious point of Buddhist teaching, whose name draws on the French « subite » – "sudden" – asserts that enlightenment is a discrete event that occurs all at once in a blinding flash that explodes in your brain, changing both it and you forever. (The Christian adjective for this notion is "catastrophic", as in catastrophic conversion, the Evangelical ideal.)

The opposite view is gradualism, in which enlightenment slowly accrues over time through diligent practice, and only in turning back does one realise it has, at some point, been attained. (And Western Buddhism often implies that it may remain occult even to death.)

This is the main doctrinal difference between Rinzai and Soto, the two extant schools of Japanese Zen. (Seon, Korea's Chàn-descended tradition, also embraces sudden insight, but interestingly, has divided into parties over whether further practice afterward is required to "ripen" it, versus insistence that the bang itself is comprehensive; you're done.)

Rinzai students meditate to precipitate the long-awaited thunderbolt that strikes off the shackles of delusion – weakened beforehand by the crowbar of koanic logic – leaving a mind gleaming in perfect clarity.

Soto types sit for insight – a post-cognitive grasp of the koanic nature of existence, which, over a period of years or lives, eventually calibrates our minds to the universal frequency – though we may not apprehend for some time that our minds have inexplicably taken to gleaming in perfect clarity.

I'd always assumed subitism developed within Zen itself, and was surprised to learn that it actually came from the Southern School of Chàn, having been planted there by none other than 8th century founder and Huineng successor, Shenhui. Further study reveals that the two perspectives were already current in Bodhidharma's India, and may have touched off the first great theoretical debate in Buddhism

The topic isn't pedantic; it strikes at the very nature of enlightenment, and therefore Buddhism. Are we a religion, as subitism suggests, leading faithful practitioners to concrete, certifiable metaphysical transformation; or a philosophy, as gradualism would have it, shifting the adherent's perception by subtle and cumulative means?

History tends rather to support the first, though test cases are often ambiguous. Exhibit A would be the Buddha himself, said to attain enlightenment at an exact moment – upon seeing the morning star after eight days of intensive practice. The softness in that argument comes from his description of the phenomenon, devoid of fireworks, euphoria, or choirs of angels. He just… woke up. (The title we know him by translates as "The One Who Awakened".)

The legend of Bodhidharma also implies a sudden change – we're told he sat before a wall for nine years and "became enlightened", though we have even fewer particulars about the mechanism of that. To the best of my knowledge he never described it, or specified a time, date, or even season. Did he "become enlightened" in a flash, or did he just notice that it had happened, and get up?

And somewhat strangely, Dogen – founder of Soto – by his own detailed admission also received catastrophic illumination. According to the man himself, he was meditating up a storm when the jikijitsu suddenly whacked his dozing seatmate with the kyôsaku. At the crack of the cane, Dogen awakened as well.

Yet this is also the guy who told us enlightenment is gradual.

So clearly the distinction isn't simple. There are many Soto stories of enlightenment events like Dogen's – moments where the dam broke to the fall of a final raindrop, and nothing was the same again. What's common to both teachings is that getting to that point, whether it arrives with chirping birds or marching bands, is intricate, esoteric practice, demanding much zazen and maintenance of one's perceptual instrument.

And that makes the query a bit beside the point, though it does remain intellectually stimulating.

Rather a koan in its own right, really.


(Photo courtesy of Felix Mittermeier and Wikimedia Commons.)/span>

Suchness

This may be the most Zen thing I've ever seen in a Japanese garden. (And I've seen a lot; been fanboy of that Zen-soaked tradition since I was 9.)

The feature itself, carefully nestled in native and introduced ornamentals, is a fine example of skilfully-used stone. No surprise, given that we're in Seattle's Kubota Garden; founder Fujitaro Kubota was noted for his expertise with stone.

What's less widely known is that he apparently also had a koanic sense of humour. Because the inscription on this stone (記念碑) reads "monument".

The Kubota Garden Facebook page says this is also a kinen-hi – a disaster memorial – but neither it, nor the garden's own website, nor any other I've found, specifies which disaster it memorialises.

But material matters aside, the Kubota Stone remains a ringing, uh… monument… to suchness.

(Photo courtesy of Joe Mabel and Wikimedia Commons.)

The Devil and Bodhidharma

I ran into a Zen axe-grinder on Twitter a few months ago. The experience continues to turn in my thoughts.

I didn't know this guy (I believe he was a guy; if not, my bad) but several sangha there – most of them fellow hermits – did. They just snorted when he turned up again and had little else to do with him. I initially engaged, in good eremitical faith, until he got personal – which happened quickly – and then I ignored him, too.

My brother's holy crusade had something to do with "one true path", of course, as well as a claimed apostasy of Japanese Zen in general, the crystal purity of early Chàn, and a perpetual tantrum over anyone practicing outside the narrow confines he considered "real". A major focus of his rage – and this will surprise no-one who's met the type – was a purported episode that supposedly derailed authentic Zen a thousand or more years ago, allowing evil conspirators to substitute not-Zen in its place ever since.

Part of that Gothic intrigue includes alleged documentary proof that, far from being the iconoclastic solitary we were sold, Bodhidharma was in fact a domestic church boy who kowtowed to canon authority and insisted everyone else do as well. (This would be the Zen equivalent of claiming that Jesus was a well-to-do rabbinical Pharisee.)

All of which was sardonic entertainment for those who'd heard it before; at this stage in Western Zen, we're in great majority converts recruited via informed choice and lived experience, thus there are few of this ilk among us yet. Converts tend to accept the landscape they find; self-declared revolutionaries who radically reconstruct a tradition's history are a hallmark of socially- and parentally-transmitted religion.

It's just that overthrowing the Establishment is no fun if it doesn't net you substantial power, which the Zen establishment entirely lacks in this place and time.

But if the next generation survives us, they'll see more of these people.

So I rate it prudent to reach out to the Great Sangha while the reaching's good, in the hope that younger Zen in particular may, somewhere down the sunset path, ingest a grain of scepticism in their regard.

As I've pointed out, the world already groans with churches, and if all we are is another one, we'd best disband. My Twitter brother is angry; he wants people brought down, chastised. This is churchifying, not enlightenment practice. (I'm reminded of Zenners who "debunk" my hermit practice because I have no living teacher, and even one who met my suggestion that Zen is about sitting rather than service with "Sounds like Mara." Next up: our very own Satanic Panic!)

So they exist, even in Western Zen. And let's face it: to some extent, we are all them. Everyone has that line that must not be crossed, that "Zen is here, not there" litmus spell. If you don't acknowledge it, and atone for it, you're the death of Zen.

There's a cogent Quaker teaching that addresses this issue: "The only way to defeat the Devil is to stop being him." (I hope the maraphobe above also encounters this instruction at some point.)

I intend to use the example of my angry fellow traveller to locate him in myself, remind him why we've given our life to this Zen thing, and whack myself with the invisible kyôsaku I carry for the purpose. 

Because this shit is a waste of energy, in all religions, at all times.

(Portrait of Bodhidarma courtesy of Rawpixel.com and a generous photographer.)

Indecision Kyôsaku

"Most questions are the answer."

Genjo Marinello Osho
Choboji


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

Incident Report

In one year and out the other.



(Photo courtesy of Beau Swierstra and Unsplash.com.)

Our Worst Nightmare

This week I learned two things:

1. that something called "the Buddha-like mindset" is trending among young people in China and Japan, and
2. it's largely condemned

The phrase "Buddha-like mindset" – or Chinese and Japanese phrases so translated – refers to a tendency among those nations' youth to eschew lifestyles dedicated to amassing status symbols and winning the approval of others. It dovetails with a new tiger-free parental attitude that Simon Fraser anthro prof Jie Yang sums up as "there are not that many kids who will really amount to much, so why give them an exhausting childhood?"

Instead, these mostly male kids are said to grow up shiftless and solipsistic, never making it in the work world, devoting their lives instead to their hobbies, pets, and interests.

Most alarming to cultural gatekeepers, they're also swearing off women. Insofar as courtship is the most grueling of society's approval rackets, these young-to-middle-aged men buy back their sovereignty and peace of spirit by simply Bartlebying that mofo.

All of which is a precise description of me. Or has become, any road.

Of course, as Wikipedia points out, "Although it is inspired by the Buddhist guidance to become satisfied through giving up anything tied to avarice, it is not a Buddhist principle." It is, however, predicated on conventional Zen teaching. To wit, as another source in the WP article puts it: "It's OK to have, and it's OK not to have; no competition, no fight, no winning or losing."

But in fact, in a twist partly reminiscent of Western "lifestyle Buddhism", few adherents actually follow Buddha-like mindset into any spiritual practice. (China's Communist ruling class is turning back flips over it all the same, officially for ideological reasons, but more likely for political and economic ones.)

And really, in the end, it's not surprising that the lions of these Asian societies are greeting this improbable teenage fad with consternation.

Just imagine the atomic tantrums we'd pitch in the Christian West if our kids suddenly started emulating Christ.

While simultaneously rejecting the authority of the Church.

I dare to venture this would be the single worst nightmare we've ever faced.

(Photo courtesy of Ian Stauffer and Unsplash.com)