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 It's yours for the taking, and can't be refused or rescinded by anyone else.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.)

Quitting On Principle

A friend recently posted this meme on social media. His immediate intent was the current political situation, but in fact, it's really standing policy in any circumstance.

Sometimes we commit to things that take us down paths we wouldn't have chosen had we foreseen them. In the past I've incurred damage when I felt I couldn't back out of an initial commitment; that it was universally binding.

They rarely are. And even in matters where backing out implies a penalty, you're free to choose the penalty.

We tend to confuse anticipated blowback with lack of agency.

I had a teacher when I was young who told us that there are only two have-to's in life: you have to die, and you have to choose. Everything else is choice.

"What if someone points a gun at you?" we said.

"You can still refuse to do what he says."

"What if he shoots you?" we objected.

"Then you chose that. And if you do what he says, you also chose that."

I remember that some classmates had trouble with this notion, and petulantly rejected the teacher's point. But Zen agrees with him. Choice is always yours.

And any road, as I write this, guns aren't in play.

But I wouldn't bet on tomorrow.

These are karmic times. At such moments it's important to maintain a firm understanding of right and wrong, and what you owe.

What you have to do, and what you choose to do.

Delate Wawa

The hardest thing in this world, is to live in it.

Be brave.

– Buffy the Vampire Slayer


(Photo of young Iranians standing against the forces of autocracy courtesy of Samoel Safaie and Wikimedia Commons.)

Hermit Rule 26

Liberate yourself from everything that doesn't concern you.
Don't depend on people or on situations.
Look for your refuge and your help only in God.

– A Franciscan hermit in my Bluesky sangha.


(Photo of a lotus on the grounds of the Franciscan Monastery (sic) of the Holy Land in America courtesy of Clare Tallamy and Unsplash.com)

Good Website: Sotozen.com

If you'd like to explore a rich source of provocative, not overly-technical Zen reads, check out Sotozen.com. Among its many offerings is an attractive compendium of Zen stories, presented with penetrating opening commentary. A good start might be this favourite example, starring the decidedly un-Soto Ikkyu.

As you'll see, the infamous Rinzai master strongly recalls Nasrudin – an old friend who figures on this blog – and also Alan Watts.

In any case, the Ikkyu story provides another meditative exposition of conventional authority: sometimes they kick you out and sometimes they lock you in, but in all cases you must be where they tell you to be.

And while you're up, enjoy a good surf around Sotozen.com. It's a valuable resource for our lot.


(Shiba Zojoji, by Kobayashi Mango, courtesy of Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art and Wikimedia Commons.)

Hermit Sutra

Eschew temples.
Abandon theology.
Ignore priests.
Walk the path.
Don't waste time.


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

Alan Watts On Hermits

There’s always a very inconsiderable minority of these non-joiners. [...] But you will find that insecure societies are the most intolerant of those who are non-joiners. They are so unsure of the validity of their game rules that they say everyone must play. Now that’s a double-bind. You can’t say to a person you must play because what you’re saying is – you are required to do something which will be acceptable only if you do it voluntarily.

Alan Watts

Long ago I happened upon this teaching from Alan Watts – an Anglican priest, founding figure of Western Zen, and arguable Zen hermit – for whom I have attested admiration. He was specifically addressing the predicament of Buddhist hermits, but as was his habit, more basically referring to the universal status of free-range monks of all paths. Virtually all religions have them, though some meet us with greater grace than others. (I've been told that Zoroastrians, alone among major religions, have no hermits, but I might not believe it. It's possible they "have no hermits" in the same sense as Western Zen.)

Over the years I've returned to Watts' meditation on hermits and the Institution, and found it validating and insightful. Since fellow hermits and the hermit-curious rest here occasionally, I thought to spread the wealth.


(Photo courtesy of Ben Blennerhassett and Unsplash.com.)

National Hermit Day

This Sunday, 29 October, is National Hermit Day. (I have no idea which nation declared this. The day commemorates an Irish saint, so I'd guess Ireland must at least be in. And since most of the websites about it are American, I'd guess they're in, too. Really, it seems more like International Hermit Day, unless, like Labour Day, various countries are feuding over what date it's observed.)

Anyway.

Judging by Internet sources, lots of people are writing about this, but not many are researching it.

This page, for example, manages to get just about everything wrong.

• The 29th is not St. Colman's Feast. (That would be the 27th.)

• A group of hermits is not called an "observance"; it's a skete. But at least the person who made that up knew what we are; he or she might have gone with a "grumpy" or a "Kaczynski" or some other synonym for antisocial.

• No mention of spiritual practice – the fundamental definition of a hermit.

This one does a better job, at least mentioning the religious nature of non-metaphorical hermits, but only after it says:

Hermits, by definition, are people who prefer seclusion to socialization.

Uh, no. Our actual motivation can be contemplated here.

Honourable mention to this site, which not only gets St. Colman's feast day right, but leans heavily on the religious origins of the word, going so far as to list two actual hermits (50% of the total) on their list of famous hermits.

Anyway.

I'm not sure what we should do on (Inter)National Hermit Day. A hermit parade on the high road would be pretty paltry, unless you happen to live near the Zhongnan Mountains. Pinching people not wearing sandals would involve a lot of people, and spread the most irritating of all the asinine North American St. Patrick's Day customs.

So bump that.

We might take a page from Bodhisattva Day and don some meaningful garment… if the whole thing about hermits weren't that we serve in civilian clothes, without exclusive robes or regalia.

So how about this: prepare a nice sesshin meal. While enjoying it, contemplate the worthiness of devoting your life to pursuing fundamental, extra-human truth. Recall that it's your right, neither alienable nor certifiable.

Rice and beans or a hearty ramen soup, maybe. A good cup of tea and a nice flavour plate on the side.

Eat in gratitude and appreciation for how delicious and filling it is, whether the dish earns others' praise or not.

It feeds and rehinges.

And that's a blessing worth celebrating.


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

Hermit Nation

For some years I've enjoyed sporadic correspondence with a fellow Zenner in England. After a few less-than-uplifting experiences with her Zen teacher, she's decided to try the hermit path, and asked me for a little sanghic perspective. Inevitably, the exchange ended up clarifying some things in my own mind as well. (Hence the value of sangha. As any teacher will tell you, helping others helps the helper.) So I thought I'd excerpt a bit of that conversation here, to spread the support around.

The sister in question is feeling the pull of her nature, though uncertain she can sustain a solitary practice, or that it will prove as fulfilling as the organised model. At the same time she feels like the institution doesn't respect her – that it views her as an isolated failure that must be repaired, or in extremis, rejected. That has led her to question her teacher's "never hermit" stance on alternatives.

As always, I didn't advocate any path to her, since I lack comprehensive knowledge of the facts and entities in play, and anyway, it ain't my karma at risk. But on this issue of only-ness, I felt compelled to give witness.

And so I wrote the following, with allowance for judicious editing:

As is frequently the case, I've been struck by the similarity of our life paths. We are, as I often say, a nation. This is very hard for the gregarious to grasp.

Although the neo-traditional Zen institution views people of our nature as unevolved or learning disabled, the fact is we are and always have been a demographic. One unserved by the innovated monastery model.

The same one that gave us the Buddha and Bodhidharma, to name just two.

And we seem to be coming out of the closet in greater numbers since the Boomers – great believers in authority, their market stance notwithstanding – began their slide into irrelevance.

Hermits don't necessarily seek isolation from others – I don't – but most of my adult life I've lived in rural areas; was raised in one, and have chosen to live in others when choice was mine.

But we live in a time when the rural areas that used to be despised by the urban and urbane have become chic, and they're clearing us rednecks away so they can take our land. It's a big topic, and for me, a painful one. Reminds me of the age of enclosure, and the segmenting of the European countryside into landed estates, which was the driving force that colonised the New World. 'Cept there's no place for us peasants to go this time.

From a practice perspective it doesn't matter much; you can be a hermit anywhere. But my preference is to be comfortably buffered from the rest of my species, and to be in daily contact with what remains. And that's harder to achieve in town.

As for your musings on Zen, I quite agree on all of them. Most of us find, when we encounter each other, that we've had similar experiences, received similar openings, and have much to offer each other in the way of teaching and support. We're the Buddha's only given monastic model, but formal Zen teachers (as well as those of other faiths) are great ones for saying that an unsupervised monk will quickly go off the rails and begin spouting bizarre, self-serving nonsense.

Which happens, of course, but not more often than it does in the Institution. And the result isn't crazier or more dangerous. From where I'm standing, it's clear that ordination is a risky state that few survive. Whereas my formal eremitical practice of assuming I understand nothing, mixed with a disciplining lack of social acceptance, has done a pretty good job of keeping me in my lane.

Anyway, when you mention Zen masters who run their monks as servants, that's my immediate thought. As a hermit, I can't imagine anybody cleaning up after me. Aside from the presumption, there's the fact that cleaning up my own messes is central to my practice; confronting chaos, accepting the necessity of soiling and breaking things, understanding how entirely I participate in universal entropy.

I suspect teachers who don't settle their own accounts have forgotten how unimpressive they are; given their working conditions, they can't help it.

As for me, "I'm nobody" has been my breathing mantra for twenty years. And I still think I'm the lead character in a movie from time to time; that tells you how much harder ordained types must have it.

Any road, society creates us, through a sort of petty terrorism, and at some point we just shrug and pull on the robe, to its great indignation. It's one reason I won't accept spiritual authority from other humans. I'm sometimes asked to address groups about Zen, and I always start by pointing out that I've never been ordained by anyone but my mother, that I have no unique understanding of anything, and that the next Zenner they meet will probably tell them I'm wrong about everything.

And I finish by telling them that anyone who says different about themselves is lying.

We hermits are a very diverse crowd – if we can be said to be a crowd – but I suspect all of us would agree with that last statement, at least.


Robin

(Photo courtesy of Matt Sclarandis and Unsplash.com.)

Karmic Kryptonite

The most dangerous thing a sentient being can do is to act on pretext. "Since you did that, I can do this."

That's policy, not principle.

Amœbic eye-for-an-eye morality is karmic kryptonite.



(Photo of Amœba sphaeromeleolus [fine life-form as far as I'm concerned, but not noted for circumspection] courtesy of Dalinda Bouraoui, the Muséum d'histoire naturelle de Genève, and Wikimedia Commons.)

Just Sleep

Among many incisive observations in Adam Savage's maker manifesto Every Tool is a Hammer, I found this boldest:

"There is no skill in the world at which you get better the less sleep you have."

Reading it, I declared aloud, "AMEN."

The belief that sleep deprivation is useful to enlightenment practice figures highly on the list of counter-productive teachings inflicted on Zen by the organised sangha. Our monasteries – largely indistinguishable from boot camps – glory in it: rousting monks afoot at freezing 0-dark-30, and then chastising those who fall asleep on the cushion. (Dōgen actually attained enlightenment to the sound of his neighour being beaten for this.)

It's worth mentioning that such machismo isn't limited to Buddhist houses, either. Most monastic establishments, of any kind, think stumbling about in a numb stupor is God's plan for humanity.

But it's not.

The fact is, any state that compromises your brain's ability to focus – being drunk or high, cold, hot, hungry, under stress, in pain – reduces the quality of zazen. And sleep is possibly the most important of all. I've found the more seriously I take it – valuing sleep as highly as sitting – the better I practice.

This lesson landed with an audible thud in the early days of my 100 Days on the Mountain. I hadn't planned for an adequate bed, and the lack of rest complicated my practice for every one of those 100 days.

In the end, it's your right and responsibility to decide whether to sleep or sit in any given moment. I eventually learned to do both simultaneously, out there on ango, a technique I still fall back on sometimes here in the Red Dust World.

In any case, it's always well to keep self-hatred – such as "I wouldn't be sleepy if I were a better monk" – in view. It's so easy to confuse that with practice.

(Photo of a sleeping monk ...seal, courtesy of Jared Wong and Wikimedia Commons.)

Too Important To Sell

A few years ago I read a Brad Warner post about getting others into Zen. Brad was typically circumspect on the notion, but he did admit to having attempted it from time to time. Which rendered me thoughtful.

I've never wanted to do that.

That's partly why my blog is simultaneously so prickly and largely devoid of any basic information about Zen. Aside from the fact that most of the text here is addressed to me, I've always imagined that what supplementary audience remain are fellow seekers, either already practicing Zen, or at least otherwise self-motivated to read it.

Any outreach I picture for Rusty Ring is limited to comforting members of my own sparse and scattered tribe, and giving open-minded others a balancing perspective on Zen convention. Thus my readers are generally friends and companions from the first visit, and nobody in need of or open to conversion.

This turns out a practical editorial as well as spiritual policy, since in the past 12 years exactly one werewolf has honoured my comments section with his or her gory theatrics. I've sometimes been savaged off-site – when I've participated in any Zen discussions there, which is rare – but at risk of a jinx, that one troll, several years back, is the only one I've seen.

It's just that, if you aren't selling anything, you don't attract much attention.

Now, if I hung out a shingle proclaiming COME HERE FOR ENLIGHTENMENT, or I CAN SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS, I'd be all up in readership. And, if I monetised, money.

And then my threads would totally be stuffed with people foaming at the mouth, rabid to debunk me. Which would lead to more publicity. Which would bring more readers. Which would score me more money.

What it wouldn't bring any of, is enlightenment. Not for me, not for my followers, not for the world at large.

This suspicion of apologetics is why Zen frowns on evangelism. Because the Christians have it wrong; you can't force salvation on others. You can't talk them into it, trick them into it, shame them into it, or even just sincerely hand it to them.

They won't take it.

The best – and I mean the rare and absolute best – that evangelism can accomplish is to cash in on the weak and desperate, those sentient beings so damaged and disoriented that they can't tell the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit.

I took the Zen path because I had to. World weariness had rendered my life unliveable, and it was this or jump off a chair. So I went looking for a practice.

Not a treatment. A task.

Nobody had to doorbell me or buttonhole me or altar-call me. I've endured all of that before. (Fortunately I'm of a nature to appraise rather than believe.)

Unless you come to enlightenment practice on your own road, for your own reasons, under your own steam, you can't pull it off. Instead you'll be recruited, distracted, and used up by unenlightened others.

That's why our monasteries make you kick down the door to get in. And why I write an underground blog that prospective readers must expend effort to find, and why I'm delighted to talk with interested parties about Zen, but usually end up advising them to stay on their existing path, unless getting off this Ferris wheel – which is the point of Zen practice – is all they want to do.

'Cos otherwise you're wasting your time and Zen's.

And both of those things are too important to toy with.


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

Good Video: Bonhoeffer‘s Theory of Stupidity

This video is both brief and necessary.

We live in apocalyptic times. We're not the first; there have been many other apocalyptic moments in human history (the armistice decades of the World War, the run-up to the American Civil War, the Revolutionary period in France, probably a hundred more), but none of those were as apocalyptic as these, because those dysfunctions were purely behavioural. Today we're floundering in that same full-spectrum meltdown of morality and reason, at the precise moment we're also contending with the literal full-spectrum meltdown of our habitat. AKA, the thing we must have to live, without which we will die.

All of us.

I've commented before on a Zenner's responsibility in such times.

It's crucial to understand that the Stupidity Pandemic isn't just "their" problem. Our side – however we each define it – is just as fully implicated in the impending doom. I'm particularly discouraged by the social justice movement, one I've adhered to all my life, but which has recently collapsed into the same lynch-mob gutter as its presumed enemies. All the symptoms Bonhoeffer catalogued – inability to overcome conviction with logic, meeting substantive challenge with violence, thinking in slogans and catchphrases, reacting to vocabulary rather than statements or actions, and, I would add, simple crass bigotry shopped as virtue – are fully in evidence.

It's become impossible to advocate against racism or sexism anymore. Not truly. If you try, you'll first be smeared by your right wing opponents as a leftist lunatic, given the frankly crazy rhetoric of the most vocal elements of your side. Then, if you're old, white, and/or male, you'll be attacked by your theoretical allies for speaking at all.

And as Bonhoeffer pointed out, this weaponised hypocrisy can't be overcome with reason. Debate is worthless, to say nothing of common cause. The mob wants blood, any blood, and its formula for determining whose is forfeit is racist and sexist. (Note that ostensibly approved race or gender won't shield you, either. Anybody's killable. The Reivers just find another alibi on their infinite list – wealth, prominence, profession, perceived privilege, regional origin, academic record, alleged or immaterial past conduct, and on and on.)

I'm at a loss to understand how these bad-actors can possibly confront the Right with a straight face, now that they've joyfully incarnated all the very worst of it. The karma debt such behaviour incurs defies imagination.

As for me, I'm not going to shut up about it.

In this environment, if Zen is worth a damn, it's to keep us clear and independent of the generalised depravity. Let us all endeavour to look deeply, hold ourselves to a demanding standard of non-hypocrisy, and act in measure of acquired insight.

Because if our practice can't get us that, it can't get us anything.

Responsibility Kyôsaku

"Do not emulate others' wrongdoing. See to your own virtue."

Dōgen

(Photo courtesy of Jay Castor 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)

The Eight Worldly Dharmas

It just struck me that I've never posted on these before. Which is remarkable, since they're central to my practice, and indeed my life.

Also, since August is "Suicide Month" on Rusty Ring – the time when, for arbitrary reasons, I've ended up addressing that phenomenon most years – this is a good time to bring up the subject. Because suicide is the result of alienation, even though, as the Dharmas demonstrate, we're not alien.

Just dumb.

The Eight Worldly Dharmas (also called Preoccupations, Distractions, Desires, Concerns, Conditions, Winds, or Things I Do Instead of Zen) is a catalogue of 8 human constants that obscure the Path. (Or 4, to be precise, and their equally unproductive opposites – which together represent subsidiary principles of the Middle Way.)

I've had no luck determining the origin of this teaching. Today it passes for Buddhist, but feels like insight that predates us. I don't suppose it matters, but if we've jumped someone else's copyright… deep bow.

Anyway, here, for the first time on our stage, are the Eight Worldly Dharmas:

Wanting to get things
Not wanting to lose things

Wanting to be happy
Not wanting to be unhappy

Wanting acknowledgement
Not wanting to be overlooked

Wanting approval
Not wanting blame

That's my personal stock. Ask in a year and some wording may have changed.

There are other inventories on the Enlightenment Superpath:

1).
getting things you want/avoiding things you do not want
wanting happiness/not wanting misery
wanting fame/not wanting to be unknown
wanting praise/not wanting blame

2).
acquiring material things or not acquiring them
interesting or uninteresting sounds
praise or criticism
happiness or unhappiness

3).
benefit and decrease
ill repute and good repute
blame and praise
suffering and happiness

As you can see there is considerable variation in tone and imagery, but the thrust is consistent. (By the way, "interesting or uninteresting sounds" may sound like a weird phobia, but there's a lot of this sort of thing in the basal Buddhist texts. Random draughts, unethically-high beds, off-putting smells… not the stuff of existential angst, but you're supposed to meditate on it until you grasp the root of the problem. In this case, the writer is saying that we obsess over contextual conditions beyond our control – hot or cold, loved or alone, putting up with rude jerks or being left in peace. Your neighbours playing the Beatles on their stereo, or Slim Whitman. Pick your hell.)

And to be perfectly pedantic, when it comes right down to it, there are really only 2 Worldly Dharmas (split in half, as before):

Getting stuff you like
Not getting stuff you like

Avoiding stuff you don't like
Getting stuff you don't like

But I guess the Ancestors figured you couldn't get a self-help book out of that. For starters, it's too easily memorised.

Any road, this practice is explosive for me. The attitudes of others have played an inordinate role in my sense of self and worth, and if you study the Dharmas carefully, you'll see that they're mostly about that: stuff others give or withhold. The remainder – natural phenomena, like cold in your room or the infirmity of age – is similarly not the fundamental problem.

Not that any of these are trivial, mind you. Irrelevant and unimportant are not the same. But being aware of what originates in your skull restores a whopping measure of control.

Because suffering is actually two emergencies: suffering, and fear of suffering. And of the two, the second causes the most pain.

Doesn't mean the first isn't unpleasant, too. Just that it's not what manipulates you.

But you have influence over that second one.

And that's what the Eight Worldly Dharmas encapsulate: that stuff going on outside you, beyond your control, twangs your desires, and that's what plays you. Stop caring, and the monster is defanged.

And you get to that place by looking deeply. Doesn't happen instantly, but keep at it and you'll be amazed how far not striving will take you. And the more you observe the results, the dumber your desires look.

And the dumber they look, the smarter you become.

And there's not a damn thing anything outside you can do about it.

So that's why I meditate – or just reflect – on one or all of the Eight Worldly Dharmas on a regular basis. Maybe change things up from time to time and contemplate a different inventory.

Because it's about time my demons caught a few worldly dharmas of their own.


(Photo of Narcissus var. 'Slim Whitman' [yes, really] courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Walden Kyôsaku

"The greater part of what my neighbours call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behaviour."

Henry David Thoreau


(Early 1900s postcard of the cairn marking the site of Thoreau's cabin on the shores of Walden Pond courtesy of the Newberry Library and Wikimedia Commons.)

Brad Warner on Religion vs. Practice

A few months ago I happened upon this excerpt from Brad Warner's latest book, Letters to a Dead Friend about Zen. I haven't read it, or any of his books save the first. But Brad and I are the same age, from very similar backgrounds, and have come to comparable conclusions on many points. So it's perhaps not surprising that his work often speaks to me.

Nor that he catches a lot of blowback. From people like me, for starters, because he has okesa and makes money off it. (In case it matters, I care frak-all about the first charge. As for the second, yeah, that's dangerous. But as long as he's not claiming a patent on enlightenment, or declaring by word or implication to be the only authorised dealer, I'm listening.)

The linked text starts with a lot of throat-clearing, but beginning with this passage:

It’s like there’s a little Enlightened Beings Club. […] Some guy says he’s got enlightenment. He has a story to back him up about the wonderful day when he finally understood everything about everything. Another guy, his teacher, certified him as a member of the Enlightened Beings Club. And now he’s ready to help you learn to be just like him.

… the pace picks up briskly.

Essentially, Brad uses the book's introduction to address the difference between religion, which serves our craving for temporal power, and practice ("faith", in Christian terms), which rejects human authority and aspiration. The two have always been at each other's throats, as they always must be.

He doesn't delve into the matter in this excerpt; I suspect that's the rest of the book. But in good Zen form, the unanswered questions he poses might serve as a rudder for your own exploration.

The Dharma of Doctrine

Recently heard on Bhante Sujato's Dhammanet podcast (available from the website and the usual aggregators):

"A man found a piece of truth on the ground and picked it up. Seeing this, Mara smiled.

"'Why are you smiling?' asked the Buddha.

"'Just give him five minutes,' Mara answered. 'He'll make a doctrine out of it."


(Nepali painting of Mara's retinue courtesy of the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art and Wikimedia Commons.)

Street Level Zen: Self-Responsibility

"I was thrown out of NYU for cheating on my Metaphysics final. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me."

Woody Allen








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