I'm told this is a fad in China now. That first glance is a bit revolting to round-eyed sangha, but as I understand it, this desktop-sized sculpture sends folks into uncontrollable fits of laughter in the Middle Kingdom.
What's the matter, don't get it?
Well, according to the Internet, when this lump of topical kitsch heaves into Chinese view, the observer immediately hears a voice say, "I'm the best Buddhist, simply the best Buddhist. Everybody says so. I'm like the Buddha of Buddhism. I know everything about Buddhism. I'm totally enlightened. Always have been. Ask anybody. You want Buddhism, you need me. Because nobody else has any. It's all me. I'm the yugest Buddhist. Simply the yugest."
In other words, this is a statue of my ego.
Strange; doesn't look a bit like me.
(Photo of unknown provenance.)
"I don't seek to follow in the footsteps of men of old... rather, I seek the things they sought."
Matsuo Bashō
(Photo courtesy of Rawpixel.com.)
(Corylus cornuta
. Open the photo in a new window for better effect.)
Appearing also on
My Corner of the World.
According to Wikipedia's Chàn article, Zen's progenitors identified not one but two paths, or "entrances", to enlightenment. The first is via teaching, an intellectual process in which one reasons one's way to freedom. The second is practice, a Zen synonym for meditation and supporting effort.
This œcumenical perspective is undoubtedly Indian in orgin. Contemporary Hinduism, for example, recognises four equally-valid devotional systems, amounting in essence to four discrete religions, but all accepted as legitimate Hindu worship.
But modern Zenners will find that First Entrance challenging, given that intervening generations have rejected all but practice as authentic Zen. We may attend to teachings – particularly those given in-person by ordained masters – but we justify that as fuel for our Second Entrance zazen practice. (Although to be entirely candid, Soto for one has allowed a substantial whack of intellectual pursuit back in through the kitchen. So perhaps we should call the two Chàn approaches the Front Entrance and the Back Entrance.)
As for the Second Entrance, the Wikipedia entry illuminates four levels of primordial Chàn meditation:
- Practice of the retribution of enmity: to accept all suffering as the fruition of past transgressions, without enmity or complaint
-
Practice of the acceptance of circumstances: to remain unmoved even by good fortune, recognising it as evanescent
-
Practice of the absence of craving: to be without craving, which is the source of all suffering
-
Practice of accordance with the Dharma: to eradicate wrong thoughts and practice the six perfections, without having any "practice"
The continuity here is stunning, as all of that's readily recognised in current Zen. If it's true that we've largely abandoned the First Entrance, here we are 1600 years later, still practicing the crap out of the Second.
And it's still working.
Proof that in spite of our comfortable fallacies, the human mind hasn't changed over the past several millennia. That all by itself is sufficient cause to mind the Ancestors.
(Photo courtesy of Kari Shea and Unsplash.com.)
I'd been a hermit monk for 5 years when I heard on my truck radio that after the news the host would speak with a US Army chaplain just back from Iraq.
I have a tetchy relationship with military chaplaincy. At best it enables sin. At worst it weaponises it. None of the planet's mainstream religions endorse collective destruction, no matter how vociferously their institutions argue otherwise.
On the other hand, the war industry mass-produces humans badly in need of refuge, which makes military chaplains a very good thing. It's just that I doubt that's the reason they were commissioned. But some do it anyway – help the exploited survive hell – even though it contradicts the larger mission, which is to exploit those people
Still, when the radio presenter announced her upcoming guest, I instinctively moved to change stations.
Then I thought, hold on. Don't I sell myself as a Zen monk? Haven't I taken a precept to strive after an ideal that rejects otherness and recognises that we're all the product of forces beyond our control?
Haven't I myself committed acts of great hypocrisy? And aren't I now poised, finger on trigger, to commit another one?
Bodhisattvas test your sincerity before they offer their gifts.
So I stood down. If this guy started selling partisan pap, I could always press the scan button later.
And that's how I received one of the central tenets of my monastic practice.
In the interview, the officer was asked for an example of the sort of ministry he provided. He related the story of a young soldier who came to him after smashing into a private Iraqi home and spraying the entire weeping family with automatic weapons fire
As they huddled on the floor of their own living room.
It's to the young man's enduring credit, and that of those who raised him, that this atrocity took him to the brink of suicide. Decent people aren't able to do this sort of thing. No matter what kind of clothes they're wearing or what they've pledged to whom.
This one couldn't stop putting himself in the place of that Iraqi father. Seeing himself through his target's eyes. The complete absence of justice or justification. Who he was in that scenario
Ha!, thought I. Get yourself out of this one, warrior preacher.
The chaplain's response was notable first for what he didn't say. He didn't talk about orders, patriotism, or service. He didn't present excuses or greater-good defences, or displace blame onto the soldier's government or superiors. There were no references to geopolitics or God's will.
He simply asked the broken man what his victim's duty was.
I can imagine the man was taken aback. I certainly was.
"If matters had been reversed," said the Army chaplain, "and he'd killed your family, what would your duty to him be?"
"I… I guess, to forgive him," the soldier stammered.
"Then that's his duty to you as well."
I've been meditating on this koan ever since.
We're taught early on that forgiveness is next to godliness, that we must do it. And that's certainly correct.
But what we're not told is that we also have a right to demand it. Because it's also everybody else's unshirkable responsibility. This was the Buddha's teaching to Aṅgulimāla: when you're no longer the person who committed the crime, atonement, not condemnation, is your burden.
I'll warrant readers who were offended by my criticisms of military chaplains are little mollified by my chastened gratitude to this one for his insight.
But I suspect the man himself will forgive me.
Deep bow to all who labour honestly for higher ground.
(Photo of US Army Buddhist Chaplain insignia courtesy of Ingrid Barrentine, the Northwest Guardian newspaper, and Wikimedia Commons.)
