WW: Collapsed apple tree

(This 20-odd year apple met its end last week, a victim of its own success. In the late 20th century, varieties such as these, bearing heavily but not growing very tall, became all the rage; they really pump out crop and it’s all in reach, at least of picking ladders and apple hooks. Since that time, little else has been planted.

Trouble is, this blueprint results in a top-heavy tree, balanced on a root ball smaller than evolutionary spec. So one good breeze on dry soil, and that’s that.

Sometimes traction and tree surgery can save such casualties. In fact, in the ancient abandoned orchards where I grew up, many of those old heirlooms actually bore from a reclining position, having fallen in some winter storm and retained enough root contact to keep producing.

But those were hardy, full-sized, union-built trees, falling where no-one cared what they looked like, of a wet, dormant season.

And so this beautiful new-guard girl is done for. How sad to lose a thing that gave so generously for so long.)


Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

What It Takes

Long ago, in the first years of my Zen practice, I encountered a teaching that's remained in my mind through the intervening years. Unfortunately, despite my obsession for note-taking and record-keeping, an hour of combing through my files hasn't produced line or author.

So I'll have to report both from memory as best I can.

I recall that the source was a modern Chinese Chàn teacher, born in the 19th century. This makes him almost certainly Xuyun; the more since in the course of my digging I discovered in an early practice folder a text file of his teachings. Sadly, this wasn't one of them.

Whoever it was, the Chàn master in question had this to say:

"You ask why there are so many schools of Chàn. [This was possibly translated as 'Zen'.] It is because people have different natures. They require different practices. That is why there are so many schools of Chàn. It takes that many."

At the time, having just taken the Zen path following a lifetime of convicted Christianity, I was impressed by the wisdom and generosity of this pronouncement.

As my practice grew deeper and broader, I would come to see the very soul of Zen in it.

Such freedom from jealousy and turf-warring is rare; nowhere more so than in religion.

In the course of my subsequent Zen vocation, I've been a bit disappointed, if not surprised, to find that this is not in fact our party line. The truth is, though Zenners score higher on the many-paths test than Christians (low bar that they are), our reflex too is to malign teachers in other schools; even other teachers in our own.

The error in this goes beyond fundamental insecurity and egotism. At the end of the day, like all we purchase with that two-sided coin, it deprives us of wealth.

Because other schools, lineages, denominations, even faiths (that's right, I said it) encode centuries of enlightenment instruction. Buddhism isn't like other religions; our founder said enlightenment comes of action (meditation), not faith. The clear implication is that the world is full of people very unlike us who must nevertheless be enlightened.

And that means an honest seeker won't simply tolerate superficial differences in doctrine and dogma, he or she will welcome them as a blessing, delving into them to profit from the insight they embody.

In the end, I'd suggest we go Xuyun one better:

Given that our species is still stumbling around in the dark, 2500 years beyond the Buddha, screaming war and weeping bitter tears, it's obvious we don't have enough schools yet.

Tom Lehrer's Entire Catalogue, Free For The Download!

This is a July post – meaning it has little immediate relevance to Zen or hermit practice – but Tom has made it clear on his website that this incredibly generous gesture is temporary, so I need to get word out to other fans well ahead of then.

Tom Lehrer was the patron saint of my college years, thanks to a chemistry prof who brought The Elements into class on a cassette tape and played it for us as a study aide. (I aced the class. Thanks to Tom? You decide.) I subsequently asked for the album for Christmas, and my sainted mother got it for me.

Infection achieved.

I've since continued to discover and enjoy Tom's work, even though his musical career ended while I was in primary school.

In real life, Thomas Andrew Lehrer was an accomplished academic with an amazingly broad résumé, encompassing teaching positions in mathematics, music, and political science, at a long roster of Ivy League colleges. A secret life of virtue that remained generally occult to the legions who savoured his storied public career as a composer and performer of jangly, razor-sharp music hall satire.

(And if that's not impressive enough, he also claims to be the inventor of the Jello shot, which claim has not yet been debunked. A fact I share in Tom's patented voice, in tribute to his questionable influence on me.)

Anyway, 'way back in 2007, Tom shifted every one of his songs into the public domain, declaring that anyone can perform or record any of them free of any financial obligation to creator or corporate sponsor.

What's more, we are also encouraged to download any of his own recordings, among which there are many enduring classics, also free of charge.

And now he's actually made them available on his website, often in multiple versions, for anyone so disposed.

All 95 of them.

And all of his albums may also be streamed or downloaded there in their entirety.

This amazing act of magnanimity (or insolence, take your pick) is time-sensitive, as the author, who is 96 at this writing, warns that the page may be taken down at any time. So hurry on in.

For those who have lived in tragic ignorance of this seminal œuvre, may I suggest the following appetisers:

The Elements (where my own life took its dire turn)

Oedipus Rex

The Vatican Rag

We Will All Go Together When We Go

And if you don't like those, there are 91 more waiting for you, right here.

Nine bows to a man who has made this existence slightly but significantly more tolerable.


(Photo of Professor Lehrer corrupting Danish youth for once courtesy of Jan Persson and Wikimedia Commons.)

The Gift of Ingratitude

I talk a lot about gratitude on this channel. It's a habit that has two not-very-subtle origins:

1. Gratitude is the wheel of morality, and

2. I'm not grateful by nature.

Prior to becoming a hermit monk, I was routinely guilty of chronic ingratitude. Which is why I'm always urging everybody else to be more grateful.

The problem with such haranguing is that it presupposes others need to be so harangued. Few things are as infuriating as being lectured by some freelance supervisor not to do a thing you were in no wise going to do in the first place. Prejudice that lacks the patience even to wait for you to fall into its trap is the worst of a filthy tribe.

But there's an even better reason not to invade this angel-forsaken terrain on a gratitude warrant: like so many other platitudes, it just wounds the wounded again. Now you're not only in pain, you're selfish and stupid besides.

Which is why I found this counsel particularly powerful:

"Please take this as permission to treat certain periods of your life as an unholy free-for-all during which you are not obligated to feel grateful."

The writer is American advice columnist Carolyn Hax, whose feature I encountered in a random newspaper.

Her correspondent was hoeing a particularly difficult row, and feeling guilty for undervaluing aspects of her existence that weren't damnably awful at that moment.

And Ms. Hax nailed it: you don't lose the right to resent intrusion on your peace just because other aspects of your life haven't.

I'm reminded of a period when I was badly injured by a calculating individual who left me crippled and broken. Even in distress I was aware that the damage had come largely with my own consent. (Pro tip: sociopaths usually lead their marks down an entangling trail of agreements, resulting in at least partial condemnation of their victims by the public when they at last drop the hammer. That's what they get off on.)

In his awareness that I could have avoided this, the abbot in my head kept disallowing my feelings of anger and offence. But at last I realised that this is what anger and offence are for. Misplaced they're a failing, but when justified, a critical source of truth and self-preservation.

I still remember the moment we talked this over, the abbot and I, and agreed that the time had come to let the dogs off the leash. What happened next is a tale for another time, but the spoiler is that I got the needed results. Taking umbrage under the watchful eye of my mindfulness practice was tremendously empowering, at a time when I felt wholly disabled, and ultimately made me a better person.

Memories that Ms. Hax's advice triggered. Because gratitude, acceptance, atonement, and other moral imperatives aren't absolutes. Like everything else, they exist within the great matrix of circumstance that comprehends everything in existence.

So there are in fact times when gratitude, like forgiveness and generosity, is not only optional, but pathological. The confines of this phenomenon are limited; no ground to stop being grateful as a whole. But for a year or two, in a specific context, till you regain a measure of largesse?

No more Goody Two-Shoes.


(Guard dog sculpture courtesy of Jason Lane; photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photgrapher.)

Makers Make Makers

So I'm reading Adam Savage's Every Tool's a Hammer, an elaborated meditation on "making", that thing that makers do. (I only recently found out I'm one of these. Before that I was just, you know, making things.)

It's an engaging read; Adam's a philosopher of creativity, and his thoughts on the process of bringing inspiration from concept to object are sangha at its best. Scattered amongst the useful bits of shop protocol, such as the necessity of clamping your work securely so it doesn't kill you, are mindful contemplations on more fundamental topics. Of these, the one that struck deepest is his misdoubt of the "scarcity model".

I've touched on this subject before, but Adam's understanding of it is more concrete. Essentially, he says, some makers work in the assumption that resources are inherently scarce. Therefore, a prudent person hoards them, restricts their distribution, declines to admit surplus or divulge where it is. Adam suggests such people do this from fear that they will run out of whatever they need unless they stop others from getting some.

Nor does he limit his definition to the material. In fact, he scarcely – see what I did there? – mentions physical wealth at all. What mostly aggravates him is spiritual avarice: refusing to help, teach, respect, credit.

I too have often smacked up against this. A classic example is the person who won't share a recipe, on the belief that equipping others to prepare the same dish will steal his thunder. (Note that this excuse rests on two fallacies: that such people won't change the recipe, thereby protecting the author's "patent", and that a cook incapable of outdoing himself is master of anything.) You run into these blocked heads rather often in the work world, were they refuse to teach you their profession, or share trade secrets, or defend your beginnerhood from critics, on the alibi that they're nipping competition that would complicate their lives.

Not that competition doesn't result from a more generous view. But I've yet to see a situation where you can really quash it by cynical means. Childishness on that level, though our culture implicitly endorses it, fences you off from the very resources you yourself must have to compete successfully.

At base, this scarcity model is the origin of the transmission hang-up in institutional Zen. That's the policy whereby only certified "dharma transmitted" gurus are allowed to teach Zen. By extension, all talking about Zen then becomes "teaching", so the rest of us just have to shut up.

To be honest, if it weren't for that second assertion, I'd have no problem with it. "Teaching Zen" puts others at risk, while endangering the teacher's own karma, which is why I'd advise anyone considering it to stop considering it. (And while we're up, if anybody out there takes this blog for "teaching", knock it the hell off before we both get hurt. )

Basically, the fear is that free agents would muddy the water, obscuring access to enlightenment. Trouble is, this scarcity dogma bulldozes 99% of our wealth into a big pile and sets it on fire. So Adam's right: such "scarcity" is manufactured.

It also undervalues sangha, as it posits that without certified instruction, students will fall willy-nilly for false and/or abusive authority. I'll see that and raise you this: when the Sangha replaces blind faith with caveat emptor, fools and scoundrels will find us barren ground indeed. Because dharma-transmitted fools and scoundrels abound, shielded by the Confucianism that's crept into our religion over the centuries.

Adam further suggests that far from establishing security, such attitudes actually impoverish. He's right. There is no scarcity of wisdom, insight, or compassion in Zen. We enjoy boundless wealth, in the millions who have trod and are treading the Path in earnest determination. What mind could reject such a windfall?

The essential quandary is not simply that no-one has a patent on the Dharma; it's that all of us are still not enough. We must have what everybody brings to the zendo. Bare minimum.

In biographical passages, Adam recounts many mentors, of various walks and origins, who put up with his beginner pestering, or calmly watched him make mistakes and then told him why his stuff didn't work, and one senior technician whose elliptical teaching method, by Adam's telling, was as koanic as any Ancestor's. All of which has inspired him to give in kind, now that he's a lion of the maker world.

The fact is, the most important thing makers make is makers.

(Photo courtesy of Richard Greenhill, Hugo Eliasand, and Wikimedia Commons.)

Hindsight

I was difficult when I was younger.

Part of me would like to go back and face some of those challenges and circumstances again, except... not be a jerk this time. Think it might help?

"Not making a bad situation worse." Right up there with "being grateful for your blessings", and "cherishing other people just because they're in the boat with you."

Lessons it took me longer than most to learn.


(Photo courtesy of Jonny Keicher and Unsplash.com.)

Christmas Koan

Pictured: not the Buddha.

Ask a random Westerner to describe the Buddha, and you're likely to hear something about a "big fat laughing guy." I once heard a radio preacher sneer down my entire religion as "people who think you kin git ta heaven bah prayin' to a big, fat Byoo-dah."

(By the way, if he happens to read this, may I suggest you refrain from commenting on others' beliefs until you know, at minimum, whether they pray, and if so, to whom.)


We Zenners find this nonsense especially grating since we barely even acknowledge the figure they're referring to.

For the record, the dude in the above photo is Hotei (Budai, Pu-Tai, 布袋, Bố Đại...). Not the Buddha. Not a buddha. Not even a significant legendary figure, like Fudo or Kanzeon. Just a rankless Chán monk of the Liang Dynasty.

Not that my brother Hotei didn't have his noteworthy points. First off, unlike most Buddhist monks, he was fat. (Note that the actual Buddha once starved himself nearly to death, and then adjusted his practice to embrace, shall we say, non-stupid asceticism. That's why he's usually depicted as sensibly slim, and occasionally as terrifyingly emaciated, in admiration of his earlier, if misguided, conviction.)

Hotei's girth was all the more miraculous because he was a begging hermit. (High five to the Homeless Brothers!) How you maintain such a waistline on handouts is one of the mysteries of his practice.

Especially since he gave away everything he got. Hotei carried this dimly-sourced loot in a bag over his shoulder, which, upon deposition, turned out to be mostly filled with sugary treats that he handed out to children like… (Sorry. Even I can't go there.)

You see this coming, right?

Not yet?

OK, dig this: the central practice of Hotei's monastic rule was laughter. He was always cutting loose with a big, jolly laugh that announced joy and peace to the world, as he humped a bottomless bag through town on his fat back, doling out presents to every child...

Anybody?

Oh, come on! Now you're just trying to piss me off.

The reason you see more statues of Hotei than Gautama in Asia is the same reason you see more Santas than Jesuses at Christmastime: he's more fun, less threatening, and doesn't remind people of suffering.

And it's that last bit I like to meditate on.

Hotei is unpopular among modern Zenners because he's embarrassingly emotional, dangerously untamed – wandering around teacherless, eschewing all acts of devotion save his self-authored laughter practice – and worst of all, he does that annoying Bodhidharma thing of preaching no-key enlightenment.

Don't waste time bowing and chanting and folding things just so and being obedient to this and that, says Hotei. Especially, don't confuse misery with discipline.

Bodhidharma said "just sit." Hotei says "just laugh."

And that's what offends us. Because if Bodhidharma crapped on social ambition and Confucianism and gracious deference to hierarchies, at least he wasn't ho-ho-ho-ing it up in the town square, rubbing our pious faces in it.

"You're in pain?" says the fat old hobo. "I hate it when that happens. But don't sweat it, because sooner or later, one way or another, your problems are doomed. Hey, they can't survive without you, can they?"

And then he laughs. Because that's freakin' hysterical.

Therefore, in honour of Christmas, and to bow in ironic deference to my unpretentious brother, I offer fellow seekers the Koan of Hotei. To my certain knowledge, it's the only nod to the Buddhist Santa Claus in our entire canon. It's also my favourite koan. (A distinction it shares with all of them.)

So:

A monk asked Hotei, "What is the meaning of Chán?"

Hotei put down his bag.

"How does one realise Chán?" the monk asked.

Hotei threw his bag on his back and walked on.

Happy holidays, brothers and sisters. See you on the road.

Jolly old Gautama.

(Photos courtesy of Helanhuaren [Hotei figurine], Akuppa John Wigham [emaciated Siddhartha statue], and Wikimedia Commons.)

Tough Love

Once, when I was in Grade 2, my teacher had all of us save our milk carton from lunch. Afterward we folded it into a flower pot, filled it with dirt, and planted a single bean in it. Then we lined up our little pots on the windowsill and waited.

To nobody's surprise, within a week each had produced a shoot. Our teacher then divided us into groups and issued new orders. Group Number 1 got to leave their bean plants in the sun and care for them as usual, but everyone else had to stop watering theirs, relocate it to a closet, sit it on the radiator, or the like.

I was ordered to put mine in the refrigerator.

What happened next remains as vivid to me as this morning.

I have a loving, if independent, nature, and in the few days I'd been tending it I'd conceived an affection for the bright green tendril striving upward. I also wasn't a moron. What seven-year-old doesn't know what happens to a living thing in the faculty room fridge? Years later, as a teacher myself, I could have prepared a better lesson plan than that during passing period. Using nothing more than what I had in my desk.

On a Friday afternoon.

I hung back as the rest of my group came forward, hoping she wouldn't tally us. But she did.

"Robert?" she demanded. "Where's Robert? Don't you have a plant?"

I mumbled the affirmative.

"Bring it here."

I hesitated, carton in hand.

"Do you hear me? Bring it here."

"But…" I stammered, barely audible. "I don't want to kill it."

"What?" she snapped, incredulous.

I raised my eyes.

"I don't want to kill it."

At this point my teacher pitched what can only be called a power tantrum. "Oh, I see!" she snarked, enraged beyond self-respect. "Everyone else is participating, everyone else has to do what they're supposed to, but Robert (her voice dripped) doesn't want to kill his!

"Everybody look at Robert! He's not like us! He's special!"

I began to sob, and she continued to demonstrate why I have so little respect for authority. (And possibly why my attitude toward women was for so long uncharacteristically hostile.)

"You put that bean plant on the cart THIS INSTANT!" she commanded.

I did. But I didn't stop crying for some time.


Half a century later, I'm just starting to catch a whisper of public commentary about the state of empathy on this backwater planet. Not much. Not enough. But a few writers, here and there, are beginning to question the fitness of our souls to ensure our continued survival.

Empathy is the defining human strength, the single advantage that pushed our fangless, clawless arse to the top of this heap.

But we have a knotty relationship with the stuff of our success. The "toughness" and "courage" we admire in leaders and ourselves amounts most often to cruelty, self-centredness, and indifference. Those who betray a glimmer of "weakness" – empathy, compassion, sophistication, humanity, evolutionary superiority – are abused and ridiculed. The rest of us are conditioned to look on silently.

Which is why empathy needs claws and fangs.

In my life I've consistently been punished more severely for empathy than for cruelty. When guilty of the latter, I've been disciplined; when the former, I've been humiliated, ejected, and blacklisted.

Therefore, it's increasingly critical that decent, fully-evolved human beings learn the difference between insensitivity and just pissing others off. We must refuse to pipe down when advocating forgiveness, generosity, and the objective analysis of karma, regardless of sneers and threats. The alternative is what we already have, what's killing us progressively faster: government by the least human. Whether national, local, or in some grade school classroom.

Most importantly, we must actively patrol the state of empathy in our communities, and teach future generations to honour and protect their own evolved souls and defend those of others.

So check it out, bitch: this entire species depends on the beans we produce.

Stand aside, please.



(Adapted from Growing Up Home, copyright RK Henderson. New Life [photo] courtesy of Juanita Mulder and Pixabay.com.)

Generosity Meditation

Try this:

• Name the virtue that's the basis of all human morality.

And now this:

• Which fundamental virtue is seldom discussed, never identified as a moral or social imperative, never urged on children, never used to shame leaders?

PSYCH! They're one and the same.

We endure a lot of banging on these days about "truth". It's one of the most popular Twitter hashtags, and the worst thing a candidate can be accused of not having. A whole tribe of conspiracy freaks are called "truthers"; another of protesters relentlessly "speaks truth to power".

And how about this gem from my Internet games collection: Google the string "truth about" (with quotation marks). Then binge on thousands upon thousands of pages wherein CRAP! is repeatedly DEBUNKED! by thousands of EXPOZAYS! of everything from GUNS! to EGGS!!!

Truth is a weapon-word. It can be wangled and pounded into any shape, and then used to bludgeon your enemies ad infinitum. By contrast, generosity makes a punky cudgel at best. Observe:

• "I say before all of you today, that my opponent is demonstrably UNGENEROUS!" (Such a broadside will probably send her more votes than it subtracts.)
• "The proposed legislation is of unprecedented generosity." (Can you hear the chorus of consternation?)
• "You should take anything my ex says with a grain of salt. Generosity is not his strong suit." (Admit it; you immediately took this as a confession of guilt on the part of the speaker.)

We don't just ignore generosity; we actively discourage it. Torture became a proud part of Western democracy on the insistence that we can no longer afford to be generous. Critics of the Black Lives Matter movement deplore the generosity that slogan implies. At base, the American obsession with firearms is about an alleged right to be ungenerous. "Vex me and I'll shoot you."

Health care, refugees, economic policy, welfare, education, criminal justice, immigration… every bone of contention before us today rests on the assertion that generosity is a character flaw.

It is not. Generosity is in fact the highest expression of evolution, the mother of all virtues. It's the origin of forgiveness, and the rationale for acceptance. Generosity makes us human – or not. None of its army of antonyms – stinginess, greed, vengeance, legalism, self-centredness, judgment, cowardice, indifference, narrowness, materialism, shallowness, hostility, bigotry, triumphalism, stubbornness – are counted strengths. At least not when called by name.

Therefore, as is my habit, I've worked up a meditation to discipline my monkey mind (which truthfully amounts to a sasquatch mind) to remain alert to the state of generosity in my life and actions. Thus:

• How generous are the propositions of this speaker, this scholar, this candidate?
• How generous is this religious teaching?
• How often do I suggest generosity to those younger? (If you're a parent: how often do you advise your kids to be generous? How often do I demonstrate it?)
• How often do I pronounce or write the words "generosity" and "generous"?
• How often do I use the word "ungenerous" in argument, and defend it when sneered down?
• How often did I reconsider my actions today, in light of generosity?
• To whom was I more generous: strangers, or friends and family? (You'll find it's usually the former. Is this moral, or even logical?)
• What did I give today? (If, like me, your day often includes little human contact, then what did I give to plants and animals, or humanity, or myself?)
• Did I give anything I didn't initially want to give? Did I only give things I was prepared to part with?

And so on.

Lakota scholar Luther Standing Bear, assessing the moral worth of the nation-state, concluded: "Civilisation has been thrust upon me… and it has not added one whit to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity."

My experience (minus the thrusting) has been identical. Henceforward I'm making generosity a conscious, deliberate part of my monastic practice, both in what I expect of myself, and how I measure others.


(Prince Vessantara Gives Away His White Elephant, from the Vessantara Jataka, courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Wikimedia Commons.)