WW: Spring by the woodshed

Hermitcraft: Oat Bannocks

I often see in my blog stats that people have landed on my hermit bread (Canadian bannock) recipe while searching for information on Scottish bannock (or "bannocks", as we say; plural). This chagrins me, because hermit bread is nothing like "real" bannock, though a blessing in its own right, and the actual article is as fit to feed an honest man as any sad soft white thing in this wheat-weakened world. In a word, it's a crisp oat flatbread, having no wheat in it whatever. And as Boswell famously pointed out to Johnson, oats build a fine horse.

Therefore, to correct an injustice and educate the uncultured, I provide here-in the key to proper eating.

Oat Bannocks

1 cup rolled oats
More oatmeal for rolling
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon melted butter
Hot water

Set a rack six inches from the top of the oven and dial up 350 degrees.*

Pulverise the cup of oatmeal, with a blender or by rubbing it between your hands, and dump it into a small mixing bowl. Mix in the baking powder and salt.

Add the melted butter and toss well with a fork until it's absorbed and evenly distributed.

Sprinkle a baking sheet liberally with oatmeal.

Slosh a tablespoon or two of hot water into the bowl and mix well. Continue adding hot water a teaspoon at a time until you can press the dough into a ball. It should be slightly sticky, but not goopy. (Bannock dough dries very quickly. If it's a little too wet, let it sit until it reaches the right consistency, normally a minute or two.)

Turn the dough onto the oatmeal-strewn baking sheet. Working fast (see above), roll it around until it's covered with oats. Then shake the baking sheet to redistribute the oats that are left and roll out the dough over them, into a round about the size of a dinner plate and no thicker than 1/8 inch. Start with the palm of your hand, then your fingertips, and finally a lidded jar or other small-enough round thing. If the dough is too sticky, sprinkle more oats on it.

Shake the free oats

That's home-made bramble jam.

from around the sides and dump them back into the oatmeal jar. Then mark the round into eight pieces. (Everything in Scotland is marked in eight pieces. I've no idea why. Scones are marked in eight pieces. Shortbread is marked in eight pieces. Teacakes are marked in eight pieces. I'll lay you odds that Sawney Bean's lot marked their victims in eight pieces.)

Bake the bannock until the edges have turned up from the baking sheet and browned, 15-25 minutes. (This varies from oven to oven, and possibly place to place.) When done, turn off the oven and open the door, leaving the bannocks inside to crisp for ten minutes.

Serve hot (best) or cold (still brilliant).

*Before ovens were commonplace, bannocks were typically fried on a griddle, as indeed some still are.

Bannocks can be topped with anything, sweet or savoury, including fruit, custard, marmalade, cheese, kippers, and potted meat. Or plain old butter. Bramble jam, traditional confection of the Scottish working class, makes a tea fit for God's own Elect. For a decadent treat, dollop whipped or clotted cream on chilled fruit and crush a bannock over the top.

Oat bannocks are a primordial, fundamental food, having in common with most poor-man's fare that they're cheap, easy, and infinitely more delicious and sustaining than any posh gob. They're one of my favourite comfort foods, easily prepared, and I've heard no complaints from guests, either.

So there you have it, Scottish bannock searchers: the real deal.

WW: Aboriginal fishing weight (found in surf)

Good Book: Zen at War (Second Edition)

Once upon a time a mighty nation considered itself the holiest, most righteous in history. The ruling class especially leaned heavily on religious rhetoric, invoking the name of a great prophet to defend its every worldly whim.

Then the nation began committing colossal atrocities against other peoples, and viciously repressing its own. And how did all of those pious believers react?

(Spoiler alert: not well.)

In Zen at War, Brian Daizen Victoria scrapes the stickers off many a smug Zen bumper. Taking Japanese Buddhism by the root he shakes it hard, and a lot of bitter fruit falls out. In the political history of our religion, once considered a seditious foreign cult in Japan, he finds pivotal concessions early teachers made to buy safety and comfort. Spooling forward, we watch these dubious innovations draw in all denominations, until the distinction between the Buddha Dharma and Japan's organic (and congenitally nationalistic) Shinto becomes academic at best.

Arriving at the fascist period and world war, we find virtually no Japanese Buddhists, Zen or otherwise, living the Buddha's teaching. Exceptions are either obscure or excommunicated. Meanwhile, Buddhist teachers kink like contortionists to make patriotism, emperor worship, and wholesale killing intrinsic to the Dharma.

Parallels with America scream in the reader's face. Reading Zen at War, I realised that the American mishmash of messianic nationalism and Christianity is nothing less than State Shinto. Where nation and culture are declared 'scripture made flesh', authentic religion is impossible. And just as a society that muddles God and Mammon castrates Christianity, so one that equates selflessness with service mutilates Buddhism.

The first edition of Zen at War concluded with an illuminating review of the ways that Zen is used to gain obedience in postwar corporate Japan, but the most powerful chapter is only available in the second. In "Was It Buddhism?", the author brings Buddhism forward from India, where it had already become a policy tool for the powerful, through China, where it acquired the relativism of Taoism and the paternal piety of Confucianism. (Deviations any honest Zenner must admit are now fundamental to Zen, pagan origin notwithstanding.) These he compares to the Buddha's actual teachings. For example, investigating sangha, a concept much cited in defence of priestly authority, Daizen notes:

The [Buddhic] Sangha was based on noncoercive, nonauthoritarian principles by which leadership was acquired through superior moral character and spiritual insight, and monastic affairs were managed by a general meeting of the monks (or nuns) […] All decisions required the unanimous consent of those assembled. When differences could not be settled, a committee of elders was charged with finding satisfactory solutions.

Daizen is a Sōtō priest trained at Eiheiji. He holds a master's degree in Buddhist Studies from Komazawa (Buddhist) University in Tokyo, and a doctorate in same from Temple. His andragogical résumé is extensive and tedious. In short, this is not the man to mess with.

But the work does suffer from a lack of editing (or maybe intrusive editing), and a tendency to beat certain points to death. Prominent Western Zenners, including Gary Snyder and Brad Warner, have challenged Daizen's indictment of some iconic figures, charging lazy scholarship and wilful misreading. I'm not qualified to have a side, but in the end, the fact remains that no ordained Zen teacher in Japan actively opposed the war until it was lost.

Aside from that, the book's greatest flaw is its title. Zen at War is actually about all Japanese Buddhist denominations; it takes Daizen half the book just to get around to Zen. All of it is relevant and readable, but I found the Zen monk in me saying, "C'mon, Brian, get to the Zen already!"

But such objections pale before the historical significance of this groundbreaking work. The Japanese edition has already inspired unheard-of public acts of contrition in several influential Zen lineages; this, in a culture even less inclined to apology than Western ones. Zen at War has changed the way Japanese Zenners see themselves. Whether it will change their behaviour as well, only time will tell.

Meanwhile, Western Zenners remain arrogant as ever. Perhaps if more of us read Victoria, we too will be inspired to confront some of the dubious assumptions we've imported whole-cloth from Asia, and so attain greater understanding of the Dharma.

WW: Seattle sunbreak

WW: Ten years ago this week I became a monk

WW: Buddha entered Nirvana on 15 February