Brief Visual Meditation

Courtesy of a Zen droogie on social media.

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.)

WW: Autumn bullfrog

(Here's another bullfrog [Rana (Lithobates) catesbeiana], rather better lit and differentiated from her background. She's a whole handful, likely weighing about a pound; I found her sitting zazen in the middle of a local bike path on a cool autumn day.

Literally just sitting, untroubled by bikes, dogs, or walkers, as one seldom finds her kind.

Frogs play an outsized role in Zen, but I'll temper my monastic impulses and guess that my sister's equanimous demeanour was down more likely to being zombied out on incipient hibernation, and heading to a winter bed in the muddy lake some yards away.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

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.)

Tandem

Let us walk alone together, comrade sojourner.
We will be like pebbles in a bag, polishing each other bright.


(Ship's dogs, ca. 1920, courtesy of the US Navy and Rawpixel.com.)

Vaudeville Dharma

"Dying is easy. Practice is hard."

(My monastic riff on a hallowed show biz pun.)


(Photo of Chàn ancestor Hanshan Deqing's mummy 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.)

If You Can't Fix What's Broken, You'll Go Insane

The title of this post is a line from Mad Max: Fury Road, the 2015 instalment of the Mad Max film series.

Much has been said about these Australian productions. Unlike virtually every other movie "franchise" (a fast-food industry term that often denotes similar entertainment), it contains no weak links: every release is genetically different, and all five succeed both as stand-alone works and episodes of the larger story.

Reasons for this are highly speculated among film geeks. Suffice it to say that creator-director George Miller came into cinema with no formal training (he's actually a doctor – odd how often that happens) and aside from not knowing any better than to just go out and make a movie, he's also a bit unhinged.

In the best possible way, I mean.

Anyway.

Fury Road is a tale for our times. Made on the very cusp of the current collapse, it takes place, like all Mad Max movies, in a thoroughly collapsed world that was fanciful when the series began. In this respect, it's hard not to read it as allegory – nay, prophecy – of all that's pounding down on us now.

I don't want to spoil this epic for those who've yet to see it, but to service my theme, I'll just say that unlike previous Max films, Fury Road has two protagonists: the titular figure, whom we know well (though played by a new actor), and Furiosa, a newcomer who is in many respects his female prosopopoeia. (English. Use it or lose it.)

The two share a common if involuntary struggle – the old, damaged, half-crazy man, and the younger, vital, ultimately righteous woman – and in the end, Max quietly issues her the above warning.

The Zen of which is undeniable.

As a young man, I was determined not to give in to the hypocrisy and self-centred self-destruction of unworthy authority. Not to serve it, certainly, but also not to enable it. This is why I get both Max (who's my age) and Furiosa.

I understand the ambition to cast down the wicked, even if no-one else has your back, and the danger of accepting that crusade at heart-level, on behalf of others; you can't stop fighting without defecting.

In Zen we have an uneasy relationship with activism. Classic teaching condemns it outright, as wasted effort at best, and multiplying delusion at worst. The fact that this means we've given de facto (and sometimes active) support to unspeakable evil over thousands of years renders that reading of our practice unsound in my eyes.

In the late 20th century, Thich Nhat Hanh came up with the notion of Engaged Zen, of which Kevin Christopher Kobutsu Malone became the head of the arrow in North America. That Kobutsu was ultimately crushed by his ministry in no way invalidates it; if anything, it's a mark of honour. But it does go to Max's point.

I never served like either man, but I've experienced that crushing. And I think all Zenners should consider this thing that I wish I'd learned much younger than I am now.

That the main reason inquity always prevails is because it isolates its opponents, leaving them outgunned and outnumbered.

And that's why you can't beat evil without accepting it.

If that makes no sense, you're in the right room.

Everything Is Time

"The entire evolution of science would suggest that the best grammar for thinking about the world is that of change, not of permanence. Not of being, but of becoming.

"We can think of the world as made up of things. Of substances. Of entities. Of something that is. Or we can think of it as made up of events. Of happenings. Of processes. Of something that occurs. Something that does not last, and that undergoes continual transformation, that is not permanent in time.

[…]

"Thinking of the world as a collection of events, of processes, is the way that allows us to better grasp, comprehend, and describe it. […] The world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events.

[…]

"A stone is a prototypical 'thing': we can ask ourselves where it will be tomorrow. Conversely, a kiss is an 'event.' It makes no sense to ask where the kiss will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones.

"The basic units in terms of which we comprehend the world are not located in some specific point in space. […] They are spatially but also temporally delimited: they are events."

Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time

What Dr. Rovelli, internationally noted theoretical physicist and philosopher of science, is saying here, is that a rock isn't an object; it's an event. Which is true of literally every "thing"; they're phenomena, not matter. They only exist for a specific time, their natures changing from moment to moment. So time is the only thing objectively present in that space.

We think objects are solid and exist because we can't grasp the temporary (the word means "subject to time") nature of matter and energy – which are the components of "stuff".

But stuff is an illusion. (More accurately, it's a hasty conclusion, leading to a practical fiction.)

So the good doctor has at long last caught science up with Zen, of which this notion of an "empty" universe, where things don't really exist, but are instead an ever-changing stream of dependent co-arising (scientists call it "attraction") that never attains stasis, is a fundamental teaching.

Which is why every "thing" in the universe – you and me and rocks and trees and amœbas and planets and galaxies and Labrador retrievers – aren't objects or things at all, or even matter, but events.

Literal products of time, having a beginning and end, because the agglomeration of attractions that make us all up never settles on a permanent relationship, and eventually dissipates entirely, its components running off to join other processes, in the manner of a wave or a cloud.

Thanks to Brad Warner, whose latest book, The Other Side of Nothing: The Zen Ethics of Time, Space, and Being, alerted me to Dr. Rovelli's thoughts on this matter.

(Who, by the way, is also a professor emeritus of L'Université Aix-Marseille Luminy, where I spent a year in the late 80s. An observation à propos of nothing but my startled satisfaction.)


(Photo courtesy of Neil Owen and Wikimedia.com.)

The Grandfather Paradox

This graphic illustrates the grandfather paradox, a secular koan demonstrating the inability of the human mind to grasp reality.

Alright, it's actually La avo-paradokso, which means "the grandfather paradox" in Esperanto, because it's still July and I'm still licensed to go a bit off the rails. And as we'll see, those rails can be hard to discern, anyway.

For starters, let's acknowledge from the outset that the above premise cannot be tested, because we don't have a tempomaŝino (time machine). But that doesn't stop us using it to challenge our mental faculties.

So, starting at 12 o'clock and proceeding horloĝdirekte (clockwise):

I invent a time machine.
I travel into the past.
I kill my grandfather.
My father isn't born.
I'm not born.
I don't invent a time machine.
I don't travel into the past.
My grandfather is born.
My father is born.
I'm born.
I invent a time machine.
I travel into the past...

You can see that though the proposition is (science-)fictional, the conceptual challenge is real. It's an example of a reality that the human mind can't perceive:

– It's impossible to kill your grandfather, because if you did, you wouldn't exist.
– But you do exist, so if you could go back in time you could totally kill your grandfather.
– Except you couldn't, because if you did, you'd never exist in the first place, so you couldn't kill anybody.
– But you do exist, therefore…

The solution? There isn't one.

Not if you're human.

Because your primitive reason runs on logic, which is why all the Vidyārājas are sniggering at you.

(However, consider that we might come to realise even this concept if we could live it. The human brain has the capacity to pencil out and penetrate circumstances that utterly lack logical sense, if it stands in front of them. I only hope our grandfathers arm themselves well if ever that comes to pass.)

Buddhism has long taught that time is neither linear nor universal; timelines are numberless, each running at its own speed and in its own direction. The variance between the classical reincarnation of Hindu and some Buddhist worldviews, and Zen's messy ad hoc concept of transmigration, originates in this contention.

That's why we developed koans, which are meant to jazz that part of the brain that can't grok the great stretch of reality that lies beyond dualistic perception. ("What was your face before your grandmother was born?" seems an appropriate example.) This also goes a long way toward explaining those wild tales of monastery practice: the decades of mu-pondering, the dharma combat, insight expressed by farting and slapping and barking like a dog. Because extracranial notions exceed language.

You can find an in-depth philosophical exploration of the grandfather paradox, as well as similar thought experiments, at BYJU'S page about it. And while you're there, take a moment to marvel that this page was uploaded by a company that educates children. I've got a feeling India's going to be running this popsicle stand in another generation.

In the meantime, why not just be nice to your grandfather? Ok, so maybe you can build your time machine without him, but who decided we needed that more than we need him?

See if you can wrap your choanocytes around that, Spongebob.

What Is Practice?

What is zazen?

Just sitting.

What is practice?

Just doing.

What for?

For nothing.

Just do it.

Practice the dharma for the sake of the dharma.

There is no goal to reach, nothing to long for and nothing to attain.

Just follow life in this one single instant, right here, right now – the life that you are presently living.

Be one with reality, that is all.


– From an unsigned teaching given at Antaiji, possibly by Muhō Nöelke.


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

Standing Up

Some months ago I had a refreshing conversation on Zen ethics with a fellow hermit on Mastodon. We're equally sceptical of quietism – the religious posture by which forms are judged sufficient to practice and action anathema – and our discussion helped me clarify some of my own thoughts on a matter that's critically pressing.

The quietist temptation pervades contemplative religions: this notion that real Zenners sit serenely with a satisfied smirk on their faces while injustice gallops unchallenged and others suffer.

It's easy to mistake that for dharma.

Quietism is the opposite of theological activism: the idea that true practice means doing good outside in the Red Dust World. Western Zenners most commonly encounter its ad absurdum form in those Christians who are called to sing, exhort, and engage in public "praise" (an archaic word for advertising) by way of filibustering hesitant believers and driving converts to the fold, where they too will presumably join in such questionable practice.

We non-Christians and former Christians tend to lean hard on this demographic when the topic of activism comes up, since this sort of exercise is easily criticised. But let us note also the Christians who care for the poor and imprisoned; assist the stranger and the foreigner; educate the illiterate; raise the downtrodden; and actively enhance the levels of hope and opportunity in their community.

A rare few publicly oppose deliberate evil, often at significant personal risk, while others – Quakers, for example – go so far as to confront passive evil. While a minuscule fraction of the whole, these last still trounce the percentage of Buddhists doing it.

Which brings me back to the exchange with my brother. We began on common ground, agreeing that the popular Zen position that practice excuses us from protest is erroneous. That, said I, is an illogical conclusion; ethical people act, and as I've written before, if practice doesn't result in an ethical person, there's no need of it. (I, for example, am already a fully-transmitted Self-Absorbed Jackass. No need for cushions, candles, or things that go ding to attain that.)

In the end, my brother summed up this entire meditation in words he'd come to several years ago:

"If you don't sometimes sit down and shut up, you'll never be enlightened.

"If you don't sometimes stand up and shout, there's no reason to be enlightened."

He also offered an alternative phrasing (another translation, what) that I call "the Rinzai version":

"If you never get your ass on the cushion, you can never become enlightened.

"If you never get your ass off the cushion, there is no point to becoming enlightened."

Regular readers will comprehend which of these I'm most given to.


(Photograph of police arresting a Buddhist sitting lotus during the Clayoquot Sound protests courtesy of Aldo de Moor and Wikimedia Commons.)

Good Song: Nobody Asks

Here's insight we can use.

In this short meditation, Rusty Ring favourite Peter Mayer sums up the lesson we all should have learned long ago, but that many – perhaps the majority – of us are still sulking over.

Candid elaboration on the Zen notion of dependent co-arising, as applied to the human condition (a subordinate form I prefer to call co-dependent arising), the whole track consists of little more than Peter's own voice and guitar, enhanced here and there with a ghostly violin at the edges. It all adds up to power that commands attention, and a sedate simplicity our sort esteem.

Another cut from Peter's excellent album Heaven Below.

I've got this on frequent rotation these days, as I absorb demands to take arms against successive waves of faceless, vaguely defined offenders. Give it a click; see if it doesn't help to keep you on-task as well.


NOBODY ASKS
by Peter Mayer

Nobody asks to be born
They just show up one day at life’s door
Saying here I am world
I’m a boy, I’m a girl
I'm rich, I am sick, I am poor

Nobody asks to be born

No one is given a say
They’re just thrown straight into the fray
The bell rings at ringside
And someone yells fight
Some just end up on the floor

Nobody asks to be born

And no one’s assured
Of a grade on the curve
Or a friend they can trust
Or a house where they’re loved
And no life includes
A book of how-to
Because nobody has lived it before

So to all the living be kind
Bless the saint and the sinner alike
And when babies arrive
With their unholy cries
Don’t be surprised by their scorn

Nobody asks to be born

Online Sangha

I've been gratified over the years to encounter a small but steady circle of fellow hermits on social media. It's always encouraging to meet others on the path – a particular challenge that distinguishes our practice from that of our cœnobitic (collectively practicing) brothers and sisters.

However, the quality of our experiences, while less frequent, can be notably higher.

Because hermit monks meet on rigidly equal ground. We're ordained by no-one except our similarly equal mothers. Therefore we share, compare, and contrast from a position of parity.

And as none of us can invoke rank to overrule or silence another, we tend to do all of this freely, in sincere respect and gratitude.

Just having someone to talk to. Just that, leads us to cherish each other.

This is radically different from the way companionship works inside, where dominating "lesser" sangha is the defining role of teacher or senior student.

The obedience and hierarchy that are necessary in the monastery or Zen centre are pointless – impossible, actually – on our path; and as a hermit's teachers are often impersonal, we're in little danger of miring up in an obedience fetish.

Obedience to whom?

Throw in our civilian clothes, and layfolk are liable to be a bit mystified about what it is we "do". In such situations, it's natural to cite first what we don't do.

• We don't teach.
• We don't preach.
• We don't accept supervision from those who do.
• And we seldom practice in groups.

Most incisively, we cleave to our founder's insistence that enlightenment is not conferred. It's yours for the taking, and can't be refused or rescinded by anyone else.

Thus, the blog and social media component of my practice isn't about claiming authority I don't have. My efforts here aren't meant to teach others or arbitrate their enlightenment.

Rather, they help fulfil my duty of sangha. Supplying, for the most part, but receiving as well, when I'm lucky.

I greatly empathise with and appreciate my brothers and sisters on the path. This is a lonely calling, hard to triangulate, because our mistakes are made in solitude. Which means I'm frequently enlightened within minutes of encounters with other seekers.

A conundrum that's tormented me for 40 years, they resolved long ago.

Shackle struck, ego eluded.

Advance one step.


For those interested, my coordinates are:

https://universeodon.com/@RustyRing
https://bsky.app/profile/rusty-ring.bsky.social
https://twitter.com/Rusty_Ring

(My timeline on these platforms is rather more political these days than I'm comfortable with, but don't be intimated; I prioritise good conversations about Zen and practice, and related topics.)

When The Child Was A Child

I saw this film when it was new, beside a beautiful young woman with whom I did not yet realise I was in love.

She was also a German speaker, and afterward, shuffling through the autumn leaves of Northwest Portland, she taught me to say „Als das kind kind war“ properly.

Or any road, as properly as someone who doesn't speak German can say it.

I served her tea in my apartment, her eyes imprinted on my soul, and we parted without kissing.

Re-watching this opening scene almost 40 years later, it's like prophecy – the filmmaker's patina of memory, the palpable Zen in the poetry, and the young man as yet too distracted to be awake to it.

At least I had a better excuse in that place and moment.

Maximum Illumination

Enlightenment is the stated goal of Buddhism, possibly the only doctrine all denominations share, though variously defined.

As far as I know, all Zen lineages, diverse though we are, uphold the conviction that enlightenment is possible in this life; that it comes irrespective of social and material distinctions; and that meditation is the fundamental discipline of enlightenment practice.

In theory, we also hold our leaders to a "maximum illumination" standard; that is, the teacher must be the most enlightened person in the zendo. The old Chàn chronicles preserve accounts of itinerant peasants summarily unseating exalted abbots in dharma combat. And if that martial art has now mellowed to ritual sparing between genial sanghamates, in those old Chinese records it's presented as deadly earnest.

All of this goes to the strength with which the Ancestors cleaved to a central principle. To wit: if we're going to dropkick the Buddha's explicit orders for an egalitarian sangha, then the brother or sister monk we perch precariously on that perilous peak must at minimum embody awakening.

And it's at this point that we slam smack into the Christian concept of antinomianism.

For among the many commonalities our two religions share is an insistence on the possibility – nay, obligation – of attaining a superior spiritual state in this life. We call it enlightenment, they call it salvation, but though our understandings of those states differ in important ways, our certainty that they exist prompts coreligionists to announce themselves special and demand extra-scriptural privilege.

Specifically, they declare themselves leaders.

And this is where the antinomianism comes in. Because upon their ascension to secular power, two unproductive phenomena abruptly co-arise:

1. Their conduct becomes demonstrably unenlightened.

2. They insist this unenlightened conduct is in fact the height of enlightenment; it's just that the sangha are too pedestrian to grasp their higher wisdom.

And that second one is antinomianism. You see, it's really very simple: treating others like doormats is the soul of bodhisattva practice. It's just what arhats do, and if you were one, you'd get that

And there-in lies a crisis. Because it's not.

Not that defining enlightenment isn't hard. How can you tell if a person has attained a state that can't be comprehended, or even defined?

As the ancient Zen joke would have it: how do you eff the ineffable?

I've thought about this a lot. I've scrutinised my own experience; what's happened on the cushion, where my heart moves during and after kensho, what's changed in my personality in two decades of mindful practice.

I haven't become enlightened, but I've grown measurably, and the Buddha said that's evidence of nascent awakening.

So becoming a better person than you were pre-zazen is the test. Are you less judgemental now, more empathetic? Less uptight, more patient? Calmer? More loving, less ambitious?

Has your ego diminished, or inflated? Are you supple or brittle? Do you fret more in social contention, or less?

How do you measure up on the 8 Worldly Dharmas Illumination Indicator?

If these lights aren’t green, why waste your life becoming an even bigger ass than you already are by being boss?

In the end, I've gained one practical insight into the quandary of human limitation:

–––> It's what you do with it.

(NB: Not a new concept on these pages, but a new application of it.)

Annoyance, impatience, disappointment, despair, frustration; what do you do when they happen?

Do you use or manipulate others? Do you make cutting remarks or determine to get even?

Do you apologise when you've behaved in an ignorant, superior, or abusive fashion?

These are universal human challenges, but a moral authority must own and publicly grapple with them. And by this standard, you can see the risk you run to your own practice when you set yourself up as a guru.

Which is why my brotherly counsel is not to.

Of one thing I'm sure: selfish, inconsiderate, preëmptory behaviour is not a sign of enlightenment. And refusing to confess, apologise, and atone afterward indicates you're not even on the road.

It's not that I don't yet know enough about enlightenment.

It's that I know too much.


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

Killing the Buddha

"If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him."

This well-worn Chàn koan, attributed to Linji Yixuan, has the sting befitting the ancestor of Rinzai. (Which word is just "Linji" pronounced badly.) Down the generations, this single sentence has attracted a wealth of commentary in the Great Sangha, and has to some extent even become familiar to the world beyond it.

Shunryu Suzuki – Soto priest, founder of San Francisco Zen Centre, prominent ancestor of Western Zen – inflected it in at least two directions: “Kill the Buddha if the Buddha exists somewhere else" (an invocation of things as they are), and "Kill the Buddha, because you should resume your own Buddha nature,” a timely reminder that you're the only one who can save you.

Others rush to insist that the Buddha in this directive isn't the actual Buddha, i.e., the man Gautama (though I believe he is, but more on that in a second). In this reading, it's really a warning against mistaken Buddhas: inferior teachers, your own delusions, received wisdom.

Perfectly sound, but a bit churchy for my taste.

So I've been turning this commandment in the light for about twenty years now. To me it does in fact refer to the historical Buddha. Because he's much more likely to hurt you than anyone else.

Some huckster in a plaid sport coat could con a minority of seekers with his pious salvation scams, but most of us will walk past that. No, to screw the majority, you need the real thing. That'll get us all worshipping when we should be practicing.

'Fore you know it, robes and gongs and incense will be all that's left of Buddhism. We'll be anointing statues, chanting names, venerating relics. At last some clever-dick will bust out the sutras and start telling us the Buddha said this and the Buddha said that, all in defence of this massive religious folk dance we will all have to complete before we're allowed to seek enlightenment.

Hell, with a little luck, we might even get the Buddha to straight-up end all Buddhism on Earth.

Which is why you want to kill that mofo good.

One good whop with your monk stick.

Because the fact is, Gautama left us 2500 years ago. He spoke his piece, left his treasures, and sensibly died.

Don't let a zombie eat your brain.


(Photo of an arrestingly Buddhic road in Uzbekistan courtesy of Arina Pan and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: 2024 teeshirt

(Every summer I issue myself a new teeshirt. Here's this year's pick.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Street Level Zen: Attainment

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

Abraham Lincoln

(Photo courtesy of Radek Skrzypczak and Unsplash.com.)

One-Armed Pathfinder Huike

So I've been at it again – diving into the Ancestors and the movement that produced them. And once again I've come up with a gem: Second Chàn Patriarch Dazu Huike, known in Japan as Taiso Eka.

Huike appears to fit the global definition of hermit, as his Wikipedia article says he was "considered enlightened but criticised for not having a teacher." He eventually filled this gap in his c.v. by convincing none other than Bodhidharma to take him as a student, though folklore says he had to amputate an arm as collateral. (Still cheaper than an American university.)

But if we assume that at least the part about becoming Bodhidharma's student is accurate, that makes Huike typical of the anti-scholasticism of early Chàn. Bodhidharma, Huike, Huineng, Layman Pang – this renewalist rebellion is lousy with hermits. Huike's own teachings, heavy on meditation, light on sutra study, underscore this theme.

Tellingly, upon his assumption of Bodhidharma's teaching duties, our ancestral literature tells us that another Buddhist teacher – i.e., a "certified authority" – sent an assassin to kill him, on suspicion of disciple-poaching. Thus are preserved two useful historical points: that Buddhism has always been a religion like any other – worldly, fallible, hypocritical – and the koanic notion of a Buddhist assassin. (Or near-assassin; in the end, Huike defused this bomb Buddha-fashion: by converting the hit man.)

These and other stories (including "Bodhidharma's Skin and Bones", perhaps the most foundational parable in Chàn/Zen) can be found in the concise and readable Wikipedia entry. If you're interested in Zen's origins, it's worth the visit.

(Huike Thinking, attributed to Shi Ke [石恪], courtesy of the Tokyo National Museum and Wikimedia Commons.)