Being Daylight Savings Time

Every year, here in the USA, sometime in late winter or early spring, we set the clocks forward 1 hour...or at least most of us in the USA, do, but that's a level of detail irrelevant for this post.  What I do want to very briefly point out is that 1 hour, every year, year in and year out, is missed for about 1 week or so.  I'm running quite late today; things are notoriously out of place and time.  And this happens every year.  Well, at least almost all the clocks are showing more or less the correct time at the moment.

 Yet, on the flip side of daylight savings time, when the clocks are set back an hour, the "extra" hour doesn't seem to be realized; it seems to be immediately gobbled into experience.

It'd be tragic save for the fact that right now is right now, whatever the clock says.

The Hua-t’ou (話頭） and Zen Meditation

Well even the Zennist can be read with profitability once in a while.  Today, the Zennist points to a paper on the 'net by Stuart Lachs, who unlike the Zennist, or perhaps the author you're reading at the moment, is a pretty reliable source for what it is when it comes to the facticity of Zen, though my intent is to be at least as skillful at disseminating of the true core of Zen as Lachs.  I quote:

The Chinese term Hua-t’ou can be translated as “critical phrase.” Literally it means the “head of speech” or the “point beyond which speech exhausts itself.” In Korean, hua-t’ou are known as hwadu and in Japanese as wato. In this paper I will use the Chinese term hua-t’ou exclusively. A hua-t’ou is a short phrase (sometimes a part of a koan) that can be taken as a subject of meditation and introspection to focus the mind in a particular way, which is conducive to enlightenment...

A hua-t’ou however is a stand alone, always short phrase or a part of a koan that can be taken as a subject of meditation and introspection. Though teachers may give talks about working on a hua-t’ou, there are no standardized collections of huat’ou with poetic, often complex commentary as there are with koans that require explication and some knowledge of ancient Chinese metaphor.
 

Though not widely known in western Zen circles, hua-t’ou meditation is popular in Korean and Chinese Zen. Since the famous Korean monk Chinul (1158-1210)   discovered hua-t’ou meditation late in his life, it has been the favored form of practice for Korean Zen monks to the present day. In China the practice began before the 11th century. Hsu-Yun (1840-1959), the most famous Zen monk in the 19th and 20th centuries, practiced and taught hua-t’ou meditation as his favorite form of meditation
practice.

The hua-t’ou, though popularized a long time ago, is a good method for people today: it does not require a group or regular meetings with a teacher and besides being practiced in formal seated meditation, it can or really should be practiced throughout the day, even while at work. Hence, it allows for a full time Zen practice while living and working in the world.

Lacks goes on to note the difference between koan　(公案) practice, which leads to focus on the 話頭, and shikantaza (只管打坐) practice.

I'm not really certain that 話頭 practice is largely unknown in Western Zen circles - there are a bevy of Rinzai Zen temples here in the West nowadays, as well as Korean Zen temples (not to mention descendents of Hsu Yun and others.)  Too, anyone who reads D. T. Suzuki's works on Zen will come across the 話頭 sooner or later.

But I can't but agree with Lachs' later point: the 話頭 - a way of orienting the mind, putting it in a place where critical thought is held in abeyance,  is ideally suited for being carried throughout the day.  I think it's somewhat of a disservice that is done in focusing on the "sudden enlightenment" aspects of Rinzai Zen.  If the thought of "sudden enlightenment" arises in your head, you've lost the 話頭.  So yeah, I think the Soto folks sometimes mischaracterize Rinzai practice because they really don't understand it.

And sometimes, descendants of teachers trained in Rinzai Zen make this mistake: it is a fact that some teachers in the White Plum lineage have tried to dissuade students from practicing mu (無 ) throughout the day, but yeah, Lachs is right: doing this in the midst of activity is what teachers from Ta Hui down to Hakuin have recommended.

Over on Barbara's site today, there's an exposition of the religious aspects of Buddhist practice,  triggered from a discussion with Petteri and myself.  Me, I've been very lucky to come across the 話頭, and a teacher who "teaches" it, to help me get from point A to point B, no matter how close A is to B.  There are other ways, to be sure, but this way, done with attention, is well suited for my place in life. And yes, it even is done as a way of quieting the critical mind during the rituals of Zen itself.

What do you know?

I went to bed last night after playing the guitar last night, with the thought of "We're all largely empty space," because that's one of those things you learn in physics class that astound you when you start to think about it.  It also tends to be the spark, I think, for lots of folks injecting all kinds of woo - reinforcing memes into their thinking as a result.

I was playing guitar well last night. I haven't really been playing much in the past few years, but oddly enough, hearing of Miyavi, it must have brought back some muscle memories or something connected between the cerebellum and cerebrum. It reminded me of this:

 At the same time, I'm still reminded of how woefully inadequate I am of my 詠春拳 (Wing Chun Ken) skills.

It's easy for us to think we're experts...or not - it's hard overall to assess our level of skill.

Ah, just do it.

Some days are pretty black...

I woke up feeling extremely inadequate...to put it mildly.  I'm too attached to many things, of course: not making enough progress in my outside of work activities, the state of business activities of my present position,  various things not currently in my control that put me in  a place where I don't want to be, etc. 

And of course it's a case of seeing the glass mostly empty when it's largely full, because, dammit, after all, it's not full!  And because I want to be the center of attention, THE Guy Who Can Do Anything. It's totally absurd and unrealistic.

But that doesn't de-legitimize the feelings. Those damned feelings, are of course universal - they are part of the hum of life itself.  All of us are born in tears and nakedness, and that's just when we're getting started out in life. 

And I'm writing this as I'm eating a wonderful breakfast of  barbecued pork, yogurt & fresh blueberries (no doubt harvested by people I could not be able to trade places with in my worst nightmare.)

The Great Way might not be difficult if one does not pick and choose, but that's not to say it's a walk in the park on a sunny summer's morning.  Some days I so want to pick and choose that it's difficult to choose not choosing.

And that too is practice - being satisfied in unsatisfaction.

I was too hard in my pithy critique of Andrew Sulliavan...

That was over there at the Worst Horse.  While I do find Sullivan's politics this side of rephrenesible, I realize that the guy has had AIDS forever, and he's doing AIDS in the only way he knows how.  Transcendental Meditation, in my view, has never survived Philip Kapleau's response about it ("Who transcends what?"), but this poor clown - like the poor clown who wrote this - is only doing what he can, I guess.

I got perspective in Mary Elizabeth Williams' articles (here and here) on talking with others about cancer.  While I'm grateful to say that largely I dealt with my mother's cancer in the way Ms. Williams describes,  believe me, that crap ain't easy, especially when you're thousands of miles away.

Ten years ago today, it was my father, though it was sudden, and not cancer.  

It's what humans do.

Back to cold/flu practice. I can't tell which. It's in "mean sore throat stage, with low to mid-grade fever alleviated by ibuprofen."

And then there's the Joko Beck angle to all this...or, the confab isn't "old school"

I've got more to say on this subject, including the conflicting things about Roshi Joko Beck, who, despite her being related to some people I could call as teachers of mine, I feel quite conflicted about her relation. Look much of what she said was spot on. No complaints there.  But at least in the incarnation in which I know her school in Portland, it seems that at least her heirs want to fiddle with things associated with the tradition.

I think this is one of the more regrettable things from the Maezumi lineage. ("Big Mind" anyone?)

So, in fact one of the angles which neither Brad nor NellaLou get in their posts on the subject of the confab and the homogenization of "Western Buddhism" is this tendency to throw all kinds of junk into it that wasn't there before 'cause they think they can "improve" the Dharma. 

Folks have been honing this stuff for centuries.  Even when folks said the Dharma was dead in China it was ticking away like the Energizer Bunny.  And folks want to improve on it?

How do you recharge your dharma batteries?

So asks Barbara.

I suspect most of us who have practiced for a few years have gone through times in which practice seemed less of a sharp lancet to pierce delusion and more of a dull slog. This can be discouraging. If the "dog days" drag on very long, some may begin to doubt themselves and the practice (which is another of the hindrances).

Practice is where you are - and that's where you find it.  Practice is as you find it. In the past,  I often find it particularly hard to keep the rhythm of practice at times near where there is business travel.  That's because of "blind spots" I had had in my own practice. I have other blind spots as well - countless numbers of blind spots.

As Barbara implies, mindfulness is a good remedy to practice doldrums.  So is breath.

Right now my blogging is kind of in doldrums, but my practice is not.

Haven't had much to bloviate about lately...

Sometimes it's best just to do what you should be doing, I suppose. 

I've been reading more and more into the whole martial arts thing - its kinship to swimming of all things, is intriguing to me.  (Kinship to swimming? Yeah, it's all about the breath you know.)

So much of how one lives one's life is how one physically lives one's r life combined with how one consciously lives one's  life.

Nonattachment and non-duality is not all that different from "being like water."

Really, these guys were doing so much of the same thing as the Chan/Zen folks because they came from those folks.   Whether or not there was an exact lineage or what-not isn't really the point: they put non-attachment and non-duality in motion;  they made it a realized part of life.

And the other bits in one's life are like this.

Myers, Chopra, and 功夫

The word "功夫" has an interesting translation in Japanese; it means either (pronounced as "ふう" or "kufū") as (1) scheme; device; scheming; devising; figuring out; coming up with; solving ingeniously; (2) dedication to spiritual improvement (esp. through Zen meditation)," or (pronounced as "カンフー" or  "kanfū") it means what you might know as kungfu.  You know -  Bruce Lee, Wingchun and all that.

The first definitions - figuring out, solving ingeniously, and dedication to spiritual improvement are  implicit in the juxtaposition of the kanji - the first is that for "achievement, merits, and honor" and the second is that of a man.

They're really one in the same. Spiritual development is one and the same with becoming skilled and accomplished in one's day to day life.

And that's where I part ways with both Deepak Chopra and P.Z.Myers. First regarding the obvious casus belli: I've really no beef - for now - with Christopher Hitchens and the way he wants to die.   That's his path.

But with regard to Prof. Myers and "Dr." Chopra,  I do remonstrate. First with respect to "Dr." Chopra, he writes:

By making belief in God their enemy, atheists deprive themselves of what spirituality is really about: a process of inner growth. There are wisdom traditions around the world that do not use the word God (e.g., Buddhism, Vedanta) or advocate religious worship in the conventional sense. Countless people have seen through the faults of organized religion and turned instead to their own spiritual journey. Hitchens and other atheists stand at the door to that journey and slam it shut, assuring all who approach that to seek God, the soul, or higher reality is a fool's errand. How do they know? It's not as if they have inquired deeply into the great saints and sages who have successfully traveled such a journey. Hitchens dismisses every spiritual person out of hand, which means that he dismisses William Blake (the source of his phrase, "mind-forged manacles," which Blake applied to modern industrial life, not religion) in the same breath that he dismisses Bible Belt preachers.

By discounting the whole notion of spiritual awakening, atheists make a claim to false knowledge. They haven't walked the walk, yet somehow they know, with dead certainty, that Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Jesus, Confucius, Zoroaster, Saint Paul, Rumi, Kabir, the Prophet Muhammad, Rabindranath Tagore, and countless others aren't just wrong; they are stupid and blinkered compared to any everyday atheist today. I have my doubts. The atheists I've met went through a period of personal disillusion with religion, and on that basis alone they became atheists. Could anything be more subjective for a crowd that decries subjectivity? Could anything be more idiosyncratic for a group that claims to represent universal reason?

I'm not on this path not because I expect to become a master at anything by this phase of my life.  I'm not on this path because I want a cool experience of seeing a deity, or because I affirm or deny what any big names in philosophy or religion might or might not have said, assuming they might have existed.  Myers writes, in various places, in response to this:

"Spiritual journey" is one of those New Age phrases that means nothing: it means not going anywhere, not learning anything new, only wallowing in one's preconceptions and justifying it with bafflegab about "spirituality", which is also undefinable and unmeasurable and utterly useless...

Scientists and atheists have set reasonable standards for evaluating truth, and like to point out that the claims of religion not only fail to meet that bar, but also are contradictory, both within and between the different mythologies. We know the multitudes of bizarre spiritualities can't all be true, and given that they won't even try to justify their beliefs with evidence, we may righteously discard them all until they make an effort to show that they actually possess some tiny fragment of truth.

I have seen and experienced suffering.

I have seen and experienced that there is a cause to suffering.

I have seen and experienced that - however briefly,  due to my incompetence - suffering may be transcended.

I have seen and experienced that when I follow the path of the Buddha, the above sentence becomes more true more often.

I take issue with Chopra because he is a huckster, a charlatan and a liar (he has met Richard Dawkins, who would not say that he became an atheist because he had a "period of personal disillusion with religion, and on that basis alone [he] became [an] atheist."

But I take issue with Myers because you just can't look at a friggin' life of many in Buddhist sanghas, you just can't  participate in the tea ceremony in indifference, you just can't marvel at the effects of cultivation of skill for others and not say that the practice of a religion that emphasizes these points is superstition.

Speaking of Hitchens, here's a Youtube video that purports to be of Yip Man, Bruce Lee's teacher of Wing Chun, 1 week before his death of throat cancer. Yip Man, who was known to have been an opium addict at some point in his life according to his Wikipedia page, wasn't perfectly cultivated all the time, and neither is yours truly. But that's not the point.




Somewhere in all that is the answer to the Genpo Roshi/Eido Shimano koan too. I'm sure you can figure that part out. But as long as you've gotten this far, and if you saw the above video of Yip Man, you might as well see what his student did, according to this guy who deconstructed some of his moves.



Yes, at one time they had to rely on skill because CGI had not been invented yet.

And so it is for our lives. Except we don't have to do 20 punches in 3 seconds or something like that.

I'll have something more to say about Myers v. Chopra

I've got a reply in mind to Myers...and Chopra.  Meanwhile, look at this.

But seriously, give me a country with a 24-hour convenience store any day...

Where I was recently...it's not where I am now...but it's not all doom and gloom, even in those places where financial Armageddon threatens la dolça vida doesn't seem to be suffering.  Now back to my regularly scheduled work...

"Who are you?" and Buddhist ethics and morality

hThere is, somewhere on this site, an assumed fictional dialogue which illustrates how squishy the concept of "I" and "you" are.  Somewhere else on this site was a post called "Everyday Zen" which would make a good feature.  Still somewhere else on this site was the time I added Danny Fisher's first blog to my blogroll - I might have been doing this as long as anyone.

I was getting into a discussion with the Rightwinger at Work the other day, and, thanks to that dialogue being published in the now somewhat dubious publication Tricycle, and thanks to my being aware of it, I   noted that the fact that because the concept of "I" and "you" are so squishy pretty much means that the moment you try to objectify someone and/or a class of people by declaring These Beings Favored Persons and Those Beings Are the Others  that  you are then not talking about actual "people" or "persons" but imaginary "beings."

This idea then informs much of how Buddhists should view morality; it informs Barbara's well taken viewpoint on Buddhist responses to bin Laden (here), which finds agreement with Brad Warner (here) , which finds at least some agreement with "moi" (here).  And of course Kyle's I already mentioned.  To repeat about that subject, it was business.  Leave the gun, take the cannoli.  I'm not glad bin Laden's dead, I'm not sad that bin Laden's dead, but it was just business. I suppose the "r" that I feel in response to bin Laden's death is "red herring."

Philosophy is not worth an hour's trouble, according to the French Mathematician Who Provided Gambling Consulting Services to French Nobility. This is not some mystical mumbo-jumbo or nihilism, by the way, because of course you know who you are! That is, a) if you're aware of who you are, and b) you express that awareness in your behaviors mindfully carried out; who you are is no more mystical than executing a good serve, a proper chord change, or a well chosen turn of phrase.

And that's still too much philosophy.

It's paradoxically seeming not easy to practice living one's life well; it takes skill, but at the same time, of course you're living your life anyway. Nonattachment is a key thing here; I had something really well written in response to Barbara's post on "Buddhist" reactions to bin Laden, but I forgot what it was, and somehow the about.com comment machine digested my comment. Or I hit a wrong button somewhere.  I used to play the piano better too and have pretty much no time to practice these days.  

Things are exactly the way they are. Buddhists remonstrating against those nasty violent people and Buddhists remonstrating against those who remonstrate etc. and so forth are all exactly the way they are.  There is also a direction this post could go where I bring notions of 侘寂 (wabisabi) up again. But I don't have the time to go further into depth in that way, though it might have led to an interesting (to me at any rate) discussion on how the brain being limited and all that makes it relatively straightforward to write a computer program  that beats humans at rock paper scissors unless they are using some external artifice (such as dice rolling with a simple algorithm). Oh well, so it goes.

Now it's time to prepare for the business trip.  Maybe I'll get a chance to update from a nicer place, not too far from Cannes, though in a more Catalonian paradigm.  After the internet ate my comment to Barbara the other day I realized I  get too attached to travel preparation, sometimes. Well, hopefully this will not be the trip to and from hell. And I wish the same to all today.

My Buddhist reponse to the demise of Osama bin Laden..and other Buddhist reponses.

My first thoughts on the subject were summed up as "Osama bin Laden is dead.  The greatest threat to your freedom is still right between your ears."

And I'm sticking with that response.

I kind of agree with Kyle's bit here (nobody could sensibly, to me, argue that bin Laden dieing the way he did was in any way not related to the self defense of the forces involved and the self-defense interests of this country).  And while yeah, we're to practice compassion even for the likes of bin Laden, given that we are all in some nexus of responsibility for each other.   But the guy and his henchmen were trying to kill folks to establish their view of "heaven" on earth. Or whatever.

But the fact is the media uses this whole TERROR thing - continues to use it - as an excuse to distract you from whatever it is you need to do in your day to either propagandize you or sell you junk or both.  And the fact is you distract yourself with this whole TERROR thing (or this whole THE BAD PEOPLE ARE USING THE TERROR THING TO EXPLOIT YOU! or the whole THOSE PEOPLE ARE ACTING OUT OF UNBRIDLED IGNORANT BLOODLUST!) because the crap you've got to do to get through the day is bo-ring! Or not fun enough. Or too painful. It's, you know, dukkha, right?

If you were Echō speaking to Hōgen, and if you'd asked him What is Buddha, Hōgen would have replied, "You are Echō." 

I do find it odd that there are a few who, when asked which "r" do you feel (yeah, we're all thinking like Tarantino now) that it is neither relief or regret that some folks feel, but remorse.  I could understand relief, for obvious reasons.  I could understand regret, because bin Laden wasn't brought to trial, and because al Qaeda #2 and #3 are still out there.   But "remorse" at this stage is odd.   Yeah, I heard there was screaming and chanting of USA! USA! USA! Ah, so? Is that you? Does that not scream, "Don't be distracted?"

I felt remorse when Katrina hit and I was in the UK, and how people were telling me how sorry they were for a largely preventable tragedy.  I felt remorse for all the indignities that non-Europeans had to suffer in the wake of 9/11. I felt some remorse (but more frustration and outrage) at the invasion of Iraq,  Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, etc.    That was stuff we could do something about.  But when al Qaeda went to war against the US (I felt remorse that there wasn't a declaration of war),  the moral and ethical action was to fight him and his cohorts until they lacked the ability or will to fight any further, and no more and no less. It's the principle of  武道 - būdō - the way of war, you know? 

But geez - if you want to act effectively, compassionately, and wisely  in a world of ignorance and hatred and terrorism and pitifully narcissistic responses to the  misery in which we find ourselves,  how can you do that if you are not acting out of complete sincerity moment to moment; how can you do that if you have decided to ignore the soundless sound, your true face before your parents were born,  or to put it still another way, that you are you?

Interference

Kyle at the Reformed Buddhist has a post  on the horrors going on the world which are almost completely airbrushed out of US media by broadcasting fluff and gossip.  I commented that there was once a great radio engineer (who had the occasional bizarre right-wing view, e.g., opposition to the metric system) who called such media  fluff and gossip a "interference."  In communication systems and radio engineering, we call interference as "unwanted received signals" or often, when the interference is unintentional, as "noise."

Funny thing is, our brains do that to ourselves or at least my  brain has a tendency to do that.  By "that" I mean  make "interference."  Habit and diversion - these were, in the West, noted by Blaise Pascal as forms of "interference." Regarding diversion Pascal wrote (in French of course!)

Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.

and

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

and

The only thing which consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.

Regarding habit Pascal wrote:

What are our natural principles but principles of custom? In children they are those which they have received from the habits of their fathers, as hunting in animals. A different custom will cause different natural principles. This is seen in experience; and if there are some natural principles ineradicable by custom, there are also some customs opposed to nature, ineradicable by nature or by a second custom. This depends on disposition.

I agree with Kyle's point that the misery of the world very far surpasses our ability to even know about it, especially with the media with which we have been so fortunate to be able to have.  But we do this in 100 tiny ways to ourselves.  Sometimes, it's out of necessity. Other times, it's out of blissful ignorance. Sometimes marriage vows are read as:

I, ____, take you, ____, to be my (husband/wife). I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life. I, ____, take you, ____, for my lawful (husband/wife), to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.

Imagine if these vows were more descriptive, at least statistically.  Perhaps in addition to this, if  there was a sentence reading such as "I understand that, if you live to the age of 55, that  between the ages of 55 and 64 there is a 10% chance of you  dieing by any cause whatsoever, including a 3.2% chance of death due to a major cardiovascular disease, and a 3.7% chance of death due to a malignant neoplasm" the reality behind these flowery marriage vows might sink in - like those warning labels on cigarette boxes.   On second thought, no that probably wouldn't work - people would just ignore that too, just like people ignore those warning labels cigarette boxes. Habit and diversion again, are pretty powerful ways to get one's self to avoid seeing how one is and what needs to be done.

But my point, I hope, is obvious: Whenever you meet someone, you're meeting someone who's going to die.  Any time you meet someone, you meet someone who either has just been born and is just finding out about the world in which he lives, or has been survived enough to have hopes and dreams and aspirations, or who has had them and may have lost them, or was, by luck of the draw, rendered too insentient to ever have had them, but is still sentient enough to be alive and present on this planet at the same time you are. And  you are meeting someone who will have been able to have an obituary written about them.

To put it in a more Zen context, as Case 7 of the Hekiganroku points out: 

A monk asked Hōgen, "I, Echō, ask you, Master. What is Buddha?" Hōgen said, "You are Echō."

Now, what is the list of things I've got to do today?  Or more to the point, what do I have to remember to do today that goes against my ingrained habits, desires for diversion, and actually helps folk here?

 

And where does getting all that skill in practicing lead?

To be able to actually see and behave and interact in the world as one is.

You do anyway, you might say, but at least after all that practicing you're paying attention as you're doing it.

It prepares you for the unwanted things that inevitably arise.

But takes a long time to master.  Or at least it's taken me a long time and I'm not nowhere near there yet.

Turns out Zen is about Buddhism

NellaLou has a great post on the continuing saga at Madhushala, and hits all the right notes, in my opinion, about Merzel and what his Sangha and Board should do.

But in writing about that, and  doing some stuff at work related to my company's business as well as searching for temples in which to visit in my upcoming trip to China this summer, I became aware of a few things, not all of which appear to be immediately related to the subject at hand, at least at first:

1.  I was still wondering why this Rube Goldberg financial structure existed that to the casual visitor's mind, conflated "Big Mind" with "Kanzeon Zen Center." It was, I think, clear enough in retrospect: "Big Mind" served as Genpo Merzel's way of introducing "Zen-like" things into non-Buddhists.  It would  end up  to be a case of the tail wagging the dog here.
2. Ditto for this "Integral" stuff:  It still appears - to me - that this whole "Integral" thing is nothing more and nothing less than a clumsy attempt to try to "make Buddhism better" by blending it with pop-psychology and New Age woo. 
3. In Southeastern China, there is a plethora of Zen temples; some of which are undoubtedly brand spanking new (like the one in North East China I wrote about in 2009) but many of which are remnants and regrowth of the original temples. And there's an obvious reason for the original temples and the growth of Chan in this part of China if one thinks about  the realities of that part of the world: Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu provinces are a melting pot of dialects/languages, more than a few of which are not mutually intelligible in any meaningful degree; look up each of the places on Wikipedia if you want more information about that.  If ever there was a place that needed a doctrine of "no reliance on words or letters" it was this place.  And if there was any place here that was "the right" place to see Chan Buddhism in China, it would be here. But exact temples and locations might not matter all that much, eventually; it was the practice itself that mattered. 
4. Introducing Zen Buddhist concepts to non-Buddhists is not in any way an easy task facilitated by "dialogues" with other "gurus" or creating meta-concepts in order to "bridge" or "transcend" ideologies.  It took Japan over a thousand years to come up with the concepts of Ma ( 間) and Wabisabi (侘寂 ) - not to mention the application of Zen to the martial arts the like.  And they're still struggling with what kind of a culture they want to have!

All of which is to say that Zen Buddhism is about the cultivation of skill of Buddhism.  It took folks a long time to figure out a whole bunch of things related to how we live, including, but not limited to why it's good to boil water, how to get to eat rice, vaccines, karma, how much sleep to get, and 10,000 other things.  Ditto for how to cultivate the skill of Buddhism. And we have to practice it, even when it's painful or not what we "like" or what others "like."

It is true we take vows in Mahayana Buddhist to save all beings, but we do that through living our own mundane little lives which briefly flicker in this place in the blink of the blink of an eye in the life of this small speck of iron in an unfashionable part of the Milky Way galaxy.  And there are no shortcuts in our own little mundane lives. If there were, we'd be cutting out the profundity of it all along with the mundaneness.

Zen Buddhism is about the cultivation of skill of Buddhism. That means that our lives are crafted by us, slowly but surely, imperfectly, impermanently, and surely incomplete.  As NellaLou points out, there is an infusion of doubt (and I'd also add faith) in this.   This skill may be passed to others in the way a craftsman passes his skill to an apprentice; in the same way it's folly to think that one can pass the gist of any highly refined skill to just anyone without emphasizing that diligent training is needed to be able to make any fruitful use of skills.

Temples and sanghas are good of course, but there's a time and a place  for everything, and if the "sangha" in question is more devoted to something that goes against the way in which a life is rightly to be lived, it's time to re-examine what that sangha is all about, just as in finding "the" historical temple of Chan Buddhism overlooks the Much Bigger Thing.

Useful Practice and Its Professional and Amateur Enemies

The title of this entry's a bit overblown, to be sure. It's taken from a book by Ivan Illich (which, oddly enough is not mentioned on the Wikipedia entry on him;  for more background on the thinker go here; start with Deschooling Society. )  The book from whose title I morphed into the title of this post is "The Right to Useful Unemployment and Its Professional Enemies.")  I thought I would visit this question because of recent posts on the subject from Brad Warner and Nate, . dealing with the question  of whether "Zen teachers" should be accredited in some way or not.

The reason I've quoted Illich above is because the  relevant and salient point Illich makes in his writing  is relative to the whole question of profession, and how we in the West have tended to turn "professions" into a kind of mystical priesthood, with a division between those who "know" and are "trained to know" and those who are recipients of that grand knowledge conferred by the priesthood of professionals.   In particular, Illich noted a couple or three decades ago or so, that the idea of a medical profession often result in people not actively taking responsibility for their own health. Yep. I read it in Illich first.  Too bad I lost the book.  I have no idea where it went, but if he had heard that he probably would have been pleased to hear it.

I tend to view this whole question of profession, qualification, and what-not from the perspective of my own déformation professionnelle: I am a "Doctor of Philosophy" in Electrical Engineering.  I am not, in the legal sense, a "Professional Engineer."  I can design communication systems, queuing systems a signal coding and processing systems, and   control systems.  I can  balance a portfolio according to some predefined risk/loss criteria, predict and estimate all kinds of things.  I've done all of the preceding. I cannot, at present, sign off on your building plans or even the wiring used in your house (though I've put wiring in my houses, thank you very much).  

As a systems engineer with a heavy focus on mathematics, operations research, statistics, and what-not the thing that ties all the aforementioned things together (which involve all kinds of things technical from natural resource  or space exploration to genetics, for Void sakes) is they all have expressions in the common language of mathematics.  One of the  ongoing frustrations/problems/"challenges"  of my work though is explaining and convincing to others who do not have this training that these analogues exist, allowing for new research opportunities.  It is often not understood that training in a specialized area such as I have means that training is highly adaptable to a number of areas.  But it is not readily adaptable in other areas: Even though much of my research work was very heavy on theoretical statistics even today I can only read about 2% of the papers in the Annals of Statistics.  And I am not trying in any way to minimize my responsibility for the aforementioned frustrations/problems/"challenges":  I not not without responsibility for shaping my organization's future; I am a part of that organization.

In a nut, the "professional" training and education I've achieved has given my very narrow - and yet broadly applicable - skills. It's useless for skydiving - or even designing a parachute.  To get back to "Zen teachers," then, let's consider what  Brad Warner writes:

Zen is not in the helping profession. Zen teachers are not professionals.

A Zen teacher is someone who has chosen to do serious work on herself or himself. Our experiences in doing this work on ourselves can be useful to others. Many of us allow other people to join us in this work. Those who join us in this work may very well be helped. And most of us will try our best to help them when we can.

But fundamentally a Zen teacher is not a professional who helps students who are non-professionals in exchange for compensation. The so-called “students” are actually companions in work that is being undertaken by both teacher and student. The only real difference is that the teacher is someone who has done this work for a bit longer than the student. Yet the teacher is no more advanced, because the concept of “advancement” is an illusion.

This is why I refuse to accept students. I do not wish to share my work with anyone who defines herself or himself as my student. That would be unfair to both of us. Such a person is only a hindrance to me. They get in the way of what I need to do. Frankly, students are a nuisance. Furthermore, their attitude of viewing themselves as students is a hindrance to them. It’s such a hindrance that it makes it impossible for me to help them even if I wanted to.

Zen teachers are not in the helping profession. That would imply that we charge money to people who come to us to be helped, the way a professional therapist does. It would imply that we promise to help heal them in exchange for that money, the way professional doctors do. It implies that we promise them concrete results from our paid efforts to help them, the way professional lawyers do. No decent Zen teacher I know of views what he or she does in that way.

I am doubtful that one can be a "teacher" if there are no "students." But that fits with my own "teacher's" point in that there is no teacher.   On the other hand,  Warner's not entirely incorrect here: "Zen teachers" are like swimming coaches, or perhaps martial arts teachers: they are also perfecting their skills as they try to impart what they know to others.  If you're not trying to impart what you know, then I can't really think you're a teacher, and if you are ignoring those to whom you're trying to impart your experience of "serious work" on yourself,  I can't really think you're a teacher.  All the rest is form, and form has its place where it has its place. And I personally do think it has its place in the fact that a Buddhist clergy is needed to minister to a sangha.  But also, let's face it: if you wanted to learn how to scuba dive, you'd want to learn it from someone who would teach you how not to get the bends.  If you wanted to learn to fly, you'd best learn it from a guy who already can fly.  And in a very real sense, Zen training is just like that.  So you'd want to know that the person from whom you're learning is good at a Zen Buddhist way.  But, unlike PADI certification or whatever the pilot's certification society is called, you, dear reader, will ultimately have to authenticate your "teacher."

There's a real problem with errant Zen teachers, entrenched organizations, and the very real fact that the great innovators in Zen have often been outsiders.   I've written in the past that the student authenticates the teacher as much as the other way around - and I qualify that to note that I agree with my "teacher's" saying that "There is no teacher."  Ultimately, this way though is about "your" way - and making "your" way is not isolated from the 10,000 things and All The People.

Warner makes another point with which I agree: you can't charge for this service. So I largely agree with Warner, but I do think that some form of a meta-sangha - to coin a phrase from cojoining Greek and Sanskrit - is necessary.  But I think the whole "professional Zen teacher" thing is an entree into all the abuses we've ever seen by clergy of all kinds of religions.  "Zen teachers" should be able to support themselves  and should support themselves and their families in ways separate from their official clergy function.  If they're hermits, that's another story.  And mention of hermits brings to mind the wild sexual escapades of some cloistered monks I have been told about second hand.  That's why to me, why they're another story: (as well as solitary hermits).  I'm sure there's  solitary hermits and monastic communities for which "outside means to live" does not apply; maybe it doesn't even apply for a majority of such communities.  I'm sure those monks who still beg for a living have a few of them that haven't become cynical in the original derogatory sense of the world.  But then again I'm not qualified to sign off on your building plans. I know what I know.

Nathan writes:

One thing I wonder, as someone who experienced the drift towards professionalization in the Minnesota adult basic education (ABE) field, is the longer term impact. Many of those in the beginning days have been focusing on the benefits - such as teachers having more formal education and training. However, in the case of ABE, the potential negative aspects are either being downplayed or just can't be seen yet. The increased focused on ABE professionalization has come in almost direct response to a rise of high stakes testing that few in the field support. How much of the decisions being made about what constitutes an ABE professional are coming not out of a creative and diverse understanding of the field, but out of a fear that "not professionalizing" will doom all the adult education programs out there?

Which brings me back to American Zen teachers. Is the drive to professionalize Zen teaching coming from, at least in part, a fear that not doing so will doom Zen in America? And if so, is that a wise place to approach all of this from? 

And that's a good point: if the goal of all of this is to keep something, to gain something, or the like, then this motive should be examined: if the keeping or gaining is not in the service of all beings, what's the point? Or to quote Martin Buber (maybe it's only a paraphrase): If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am for myself only, then what am I?

That ought to enter into the conversation as well.

So maybe the "solution" is an "organization" that promises exactly none of the "benefits" of professionalism, doesn't certify anyone for anything, but still propagates information related to "Zen teachers" for good or for ill.  Maybe to a certain extent that "organization" already exists: it's part of humanity.  Or maybe it doesn't.

十年に結婚した現存 - Being Married there 10 years

Extreme gratitude, love,  and humility.

Is the toilet backed up again?

Who left the dishes on the table?

Why I don't have a top ten list of "Spiritual Teachers"

The older I get, the more I realize the wisdom of my teacher's line about "There is no teacher." Seriously. "Teacher" is still kind of an odd term to apply to him, but given that I'm pressed for time this morning, I'll go with it.  "Dude" doesn't seem to cut it as an appellation, and 親分 (oyabun), well, I'll be posting about that later, I suppose, but that term doesn't apply either.

There was some buzz in Twitter about "Spiritual Teachers" possibly instigated by this post over at, uh, yeah, Tricycle.  But of course I've said enough about Tricycle for a week or so (until of course they do something else blog-worthy, I suppose).  But via Twitter I cam across this odd post by Diane Musho Hamilton.  She's a bit more poetic I think that the average Integralian - you know, they always say, "integral this" and "integral that." "Integral Cheerios," for example, would not be out of character.

In her response to a Watkins Review article  on a "top 100" "Spiritual Teachers"  she lists her own, though not in much of an articulated order.  Can you see where this post is going yet?

Watkins included Wayne Dyer and Louise Hay, and I listed Genpo Roshi and Choygam Trungpa Rinpoche. Ken Wilber made their list at number nine, just before Rhonda Byrne—but for me, Ken comes in third, just after His Holiness and Oprah. Why? Because he has had more influence in my life that almost any other single writer or spiritual teacher.

Ken doesn’t claim to be a teacher. We all know that. True, he does not fulfill the role of guru, but a substantial number of people around the globe have discovered boundless perfection while sitting alone at night reading his books. Not only has reading Ken’s work opened their minds, but his writing evokes a deep, abiding compassion by helping his readers embrace the complexity-of-the-world-as-it-is through the door of their cognitive understanding. It is a bit of a quandary how one of the world’s most cutting edge thinkers also has the simultaneous capacity for opening the heart. But isn’t that what good theory does?  Help us turn towards the real? And isn’t Ken’s genius precisely for showing us that mind and heart are one—that truth and compassion are the same thing?

Ken’s writing throws nothing out—not evolution, neuroscience or biochemistry, not history, political theory, or social engagement. And certainly not the great spiritual traditions. He is able to bridge meditative insight from the East with the Western mystical traditions, and presence the latest and greatest innovations of science and psychology in our contemplation. And without the pretense of spiritual guidance, he implicitly encourages his readers to be free to grow and to awaken, participating in the magnificence of evolution, and trusting their unique moment of now in the coursing of history. And what a talent that is.

I wanted to include a bit of  the Wilber bit because - well, it's fawning.  And even though I have a low opinion of Wilber's work - who clearly is inferior as a philosopher to those who actually profess the subject - no matter what their particular specialty  biases or what-not- this post is not about Wilber.  Much.  

No, it's that first sentence in the quote - of this post of March 29 - that grabbed my attention. On the exact same day as that post by Adam Tebbe comes out about how Genpo Merzel is doing a "disrobing do-over" - on the exact same day - Diane Musho Hamilton publishes a "list" of "spiritual teachers" that includes him.

Merzel is below Oprah Winfrey, to be sure...but I digress. 

Merzel?  Ms. Hamilton should read all of NellaLou's post on the subject of "Sex and the Sangha."  Admittedly, Musho is a "student" of Genpo Merzel, but as I continually tell my guys, if the student cannot teach the teacher now and then, the teacher is a horrible teacher.  And this was a perfect opportunity for Musho to teach something to her teacher.

 On the Zen Forum International site in an area discussing recent issues with Eido Shimano, one "sweepingzen" (Tebbe?) wrote, "I would also like to state that it's getting very old hearing people trying to save Shimano's reputation.'Eido Roshi’s uncompromising and penetrating Dharma Eye, which reveals directly the luminous power of the unconditioned mind.'  If Roko Chayat believes that then perhaps she is too close to the matters at hand to see the situation clearly."

The exact  thing applies to Musho Hamilton re: Genpo Merzel.  If she think's he's a "top ten" "spiritual teacher,"  then she's way too close to the situation to have any kind of clear viewpoint of such matters. Genpo Merzel has done great harm to the reputation of Zen practice.  Holding him up as some kind of ideal is an insult to those who are struggling with their own practices, not to mention those who have been immediately harmed by his behavior.

Of course, if you poke enough, you could say that about all the people on her list.  I don't have the  time or space to go through every last one of them, but the point is, by holding people up to some kind of ideal as a "great" spiritual teacher,  they are pointing away from The Matter at Hand. 

And they totally don't get nonduality. The preceding sentence intentionally self-referential , referential to myself and my own practice and self-contradictory - go read that last sentence again.  But the reality is, people just starting out in this practice aren't going to get the subtlety of all that.  And holding up Genpo Merzel or any of these other folk are setting up a stumbling block for the inexperienced practitioner, and it's not even a good stumbling block - the kind that is intentionally placed there to improve the practice!

So I think it's best not to have a "spiritual teachers" list.  There is no teacher.

Now go figure it out.  Pay attention.

Nonduality, prajna paramita, nihilism and yep, "Western" Buddhism

Duff McDuffee at the Beyond Personal Growth blog wrote:

If we believe things are ultimately meaningless, then we must constantly, consciously, and willfully be constructing this meaning. This leads naturally to the highly aggressive happy seeker who must at all times be in control of what things mean, bringing more people into their worldview or else it will all fall apart. While we do in fact construct meanings in our lives, there are not infinite possible storylines but likely clusters, common themes, etc. that bind us together as human beings. These aren’t exactly “objective” but more clusters of subjective possibility that we can select from and edit appropriately to fit the specific details of actual events in our lives.

Thus the events of our lives do have a sort of pre-given possibility for meaningfulness, meaningful specifically to the human subjects that participate in them. There is no need to fear any meaningless “objective” universe for such a thing is an abstraction—not an ultimate, observable reality—and instead we find that by surrendering into an unknowing void of meaning, we discover a peace of Being that is beyond aggressively grasping for meaningfulness or imposing our chosen meanings onto others.

 For me, the mention of " a peace of Being that is beyond aggressively grasping for meaningfulness or imposing our chosen meanings" is already saying too much, but there's an interesting point to ponder under this:  To what degree are we willfully constructing a narrative of meaninglessness or other "-isms" in our heads?

It is true that nihilism is a dictatorial approach to Existence, attempting to pin down yet another narrative onto it; putting another existence onto Existence by putting another's head onto one's own. It's just like any other narrative in that regard.

The practice for which we should be aiming should be that which arrives at a viewpoint which is truly non-dual in this regard: not one, not two; not separate, not together, the absolute inter-co-existing with the relative. It should be with "no eyes no ears no nose no tongue no body no seeing no hearing no smelling no tasting no touching no world of sight no world of consciousness no ignorance and no end to ignorance no old age and death and no end to old age and death no suffering no craving no extinction no path no wisdom no attainment."  It should avoid excessive scrupulosity and laziness. It should take effort, but not with anxiety and excessive tautness, and not being sleepy either.

Coincident with the point Duff made, but on  different subjects, the Guardian article  about which I'd written earlier is stirring more responses from the Buddhist blogosphere (e.g. here and here).  It simply astounds me how many compartments people make for things and ideas.