One-Legged Meditation

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

You can fill in its backstory yourself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, what to do?

Well…

Sit down.

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

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

Street Level Zen: Refuge

"Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places."

Henry Beston

(Photo courtesy of Mario Dobelmann and Unsplash.com.)

Refuge

Zen is all about refuge. To this end, monastery monks daily intone the Three Refuge (or Three Jewel) Chant:

I take refuge in Buddha.
I take refuge in Dharma.
I take refuge in Sangha.

(In theory, the first and third "refuges" are only a means to the second, which is the ultimate point of Buddhist practice. As a famous Zen teaching advises, even the Buddha himself is only toilet paper: really valuable when used, really objectionable after.)

In my practice, I find that this issue of refuge – specifically, where I seek it – comes up every minute. Every experience I've ever had has led me to the conclusion that the Buddha's teaching – that the Dharma is the only shelter, and all else a trap – is scientific fact.

So I'm enlightened. Schedule me to address the UN; I'll straighten those people out.

On second thought, maybe you better hold off, just yet.

Turns out "knowing" is not the same as "doing". Even "learning over and over and over again", for some reason, is still not attaining.

I keep seeking refuge in other stuff. Especially people. People suck as refuge. That's not misanthropy; it's just that all of us are so busy screaming our lungs out in our pitch-dark cells that we're not reliable refuge for others. Even those who don't want to, are going to fail you. (And most aren't even trying.) I know this, but somehow I can't shake the notion that – for example – female companionship would make me happy. Reams of research have proven that well dry, and I've even stopped drilling there. (Is it just me, or did it suddenly get Freudian in here…) But still that voice whispers, "That's where it all went wrong. If you'd found a loving woman, you'd be fine."

No I wouldn't. I'd be fretting about something else. Like jobs. Yeah, I know this culture teaches that a "productive" life (which bears a remarkable resemblance to slavery) is the key to happiness, but my success at finding an enlightened, non-exploitative employer is a precise mirror of my love life. Score: zero.

And I've been blessed with a pretty good family, when I look around at what others drew, but that's no source of enduring happiness either. I also have excellent friends, but they have their own lives, worries, and issues.

In sum, no-one I've ever met is any more perfect than me. And boy, is that bad news.

I've tried other things, too. Pretty much all of them, in fact: nationalism, religion, ideology, advocacy of this and that, marketing my skills and talents, competing, coöperating, obeying, rebelling, serving others, serving myself. None of it is worth a crock of warm spit.

The only thing that works is the Dharma. I call it keeping your eyes on the horizon. When things get really bad, I literally lift my eyes to the sky. It's big. Bigger than me. Bigger than you. Bigger than big, in fact.

According to Zen, "don't know mind" is the road to that refuge, and all my research to date endorses that. How else you gonna learn what you already know? One way or the other, it's crucial to remember that time is long, space is big, and people are stupid. Don't get attached to being one. This is only temporary.

May we all find a warm and lasting refuge.


(Photo courtesy of Diego Delso and Wikimedia Commons.)