Zen and the art of becoming cliched

I'm a sucker for Buddhist writings: I own more of Shambhala's books than they do. I trawl websites and blogs and I used to buy the two big magazines before the demise of Borders, the sole stockist in my city. If one immerses oneself in all this print for long enough, you begin to see patterns forming; patterns which quickly become cliches or buzzwords.  I'm guilty of it in my own amateurish scrawlings. Spoken words I believe are less susceptible to becoming stale. But writings start off somewhat stale, and only get worse with repetition and time. So for expediency's sake, I shall engage in a little cliche busting, albeit with the greatest respect for the writers who are bravely putting their stuff out there. Apologies for the lack of slanty thing over the "e" of cliche. I don't know how to do it in Blogger...

In no particular order:

1) Domestic Zen

Yes, yes, Zen isn't all about samadhi, koan and and satori. It's about real stuff like housework and washing your pants. I love that Zen has that practical edge and isn't all crazy metaphysical hooha. But I like the hooha. I like that Zen looks squarely at the Great Matter of Life and Death, and at our small ideas about self, time, and our place in the Universe and busts them right apart. And there's some magic in that. It's not all domestic drudgery hem hem sorry Dharma. 

2) "The present moment"

What can I say? The whole thing behind this teaching it seems is to get a person to see that it's serves no purpose catapulting their mind about like a time-travelling worry machine, that everything you neeed is right at hand. But this phrase gets chucked around so much, when I hear it I have visions of time all sliced up into little bits and marching past my eyes...there is no present moment! There are no "moments"! Time is not divided up into little moment-shaped pieces, okay?

3) The koan about rubbing the tile to make a mirror

Zazen has no point, you can't become Buddha by sitting, blah blah blah...Yeah yeah, but it was his rubbing the tile that made the other dude realise his Buddha nature wasn't it? This koan is in almost every book about Zen that I pick up. That's all really.

4) Babies and their bathwater

This one crops up whenever the state of Western Dharma is up for discussion. Archaeologists of the future may well conclude that Western Buddhists were cruel to children.

5) Zen and the art of...

Okay guilty as charged. "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" was a great book, which no-one seems really to read. They just appropriate the title for their own devious ends...

I hope you've enjoyed my rant. And taken it with a large dosage of salt. 

Zen without zazen

In the Summer I had a minor operation hem hem which has made it difficult to sit zazen. For a time it was improving, but now it's got worse again and I'm left feeling rather distant from zen practice. There's a sesshin coming up in November that I'm hoping to be healed up enough for...

But my question is this: if you can't sit, are you outside the jurisdiction of Zen? Can one really be a Zen student if you can't sit for hours whether on a cushion or in a chair? Most Zen teachers of  both old and current times recommend two things: having a teacher, and sitting zazen. Nought out of two isn't so good.

People may say "It doesn't matter, it's the spirit of the thing, not how many hours you sit." But that isn't backed up by contemporary Zen culture. I'll admit, I haven't asked if I could stand or do a long kinhin. Not being able to sit of course means that all I want to do is sit. I am appreciating  zazen in a way that I haven't before. On the other hand, not being able to do it makes it seem...arbitrary. There. I said it, and various Zen luminaries are revolving madly in their graves...or maybe not. Despite their absolute insistence on zazen, I'm sure if you could ask Kodo Sawaki or Uchiyama Roshi for example, they would agree: there's nothing special about zazen. There's nothing magical about it. If you don't do it, it's not the end of the world. But that's exactly why it should be done (when "shoulds" come up I get nervous but there you have it...). Zazen is not in that karma-world of "I do it because of this result and this expectation". It's fairly unique in being in a realm of "just do." Not that this means I should endanger the health of my posterior and body in general in order to do it. That kind of thinking really is full of traps. When I can't do it, I can't do it. As soon as I can, I do it. Is that the zazen of non-zazen?

Zen and the Art of Being Grindingly Poor

As I have pointed out before, Great Britain is hardly a hotspot for Zen Buddhism. But I think we're going to need it here soon, given the economic predictions of our leaders. The rub is this: we are all going to have to put up with having less, in a material and fiscal sense. Whilst we've got groovy holidays and lovely gadgets, Buddhism, with its gloomy-seeming First Noble Truth "Life is (or inherently contains) suffering" is not the popular choice. Now that the great global Being-Shafted-By-Bankers plan seems to be well underway, a non-materialistic yet non-theistic approach to life looks like a good idea. What is sesshin if not a boot camp for the soon-to-be-poor? I know after a week of sitting on my cushion, even a bowl of plain porridge seeems like some sort of sensory overload. Zazen basically teaches you to be wholly appreciative of anything that's not zazen.

It's encouraging for us to look back and see that there have been many times in the past when Zen practitioners lived very frugally, and yet still enjoyed rich and fulfilling lives. I think in the future things may get a bit communal, and a bit less individualistic. Again sesshin, and indeed the whole Zen approach is a good primer in this kind of getting-along "together-action" as Seung Sahn refers to it. It may seem a bit lazy, a bit fatalistic even, but I am not one inclined to protests and so on, though I daresay some of that might be needed as the purse-strings draw ever tighter. I am more interested in adapting my life circumstances and finding happiness as near at hand as possible. Also, wear and tear on the zafu aside, the running costs of Zen are pretty low. Now, I'm off to pen the best-selling "How to be poor and happy" to see if I can make my fortune before this whole sorry mess blows up...

The Hesitant Bodhisattva

“Make now your mind that of a bodhisattva”: that was a piece of advice I got from a Zen teacher by email. I have been considering for a few years the possibility of going through the Bodhisattva ordination. There are quite a few reasons why I don’t feel it’s a good idea. First and foremost is the feeling that I’m officially “joining” a religious organisation. That doesn’t sit right. Secondly there is the feeling that I’m somehow separating myself from my peers. That may sound strange, but the fact is this: the majority of people I know would regard Zen and Buddhism as being, well, a bit weird. Normally, I’m not one to mind such things, but sometimes I get tired of being stuck out on a limb. The other main reason is, quite simply, I don’t feel I commit myself enough. I often slack-off from attending zazen. I don’t feel like an exemplar of zen practice, not at all. I’m not even all that mad-keen on sesshin if I’m really honest. I should confess that there are loads of things I like that aren’t zen.

But then a thought struck me recently. The whole idea of the Bodhisattva is that he or she is busy practicing in whatever situation they find themselves in, whether that be a temple, a supermarket or an underwater chess championship. Perhaps then, a lazy and unsure Bodhisattva might have his uses, to those who are even more so. Or even just to show that there’s more than one way to skin Nansen’s cat, as it were. I think I’ve built up this crazy picture of what being a Bodhisattva is all about, but as the teacher suggested: you can be a Bodhisattva now. All beings are already deeply in touch with our life, so really we cannot avoid being an examplar of humanity. Think about it. It's kind of scary....

The English Riots

Tonight could be another night of violence across England, as a portion of my fellow countrymen and women decide whether or not to feed the growing tide of rioting, arson and looting. There are many ways of painting what's going on: an oppressed and unheard underclass acting out their anger? Materialism gone rampant? A statement against Capitalism? A profession of love for Capitalism?
If I am disgusted at the level of consumerism evident in these acts, then I'd best be sure to check out my own desires: am I really desireless? If I am surprised by the levels of thoughtlessness shown, then I ought to recognise my own capacity for such thoughtlessness.
If we as a country are surprised that people will commit violence and engage in looting, perhaps we had better check the culture that we surround ourselves with, the endless adverts, films and games which promote the acquisition of goods, and which promote violence as a justifiable tool.
None of this is the same as saying that these acts are blameless. To say that someone is purely at the mercy of their environment is to patronise them, and rob them of their human quality. But at the same time as seeking "justice", we have to ask: what have we done to minimise hatred, materialism, and violence?
Be cool Englanders, be cool...

Shambhala: 35 under 35

Howdy Zen fans! I haven't been writing much here for a few days, for which I apologise. But I have been moonlighting on the side, writing pieces which I hope will included in a new project run by Shambhala Publications called "35 under 35". Here's a link to it:

http://www.35u35.com/

Writing "Winter skincare do's and don'ts" doesn't come easy"

So I have been creaming off the best bits for later consumption, which is mean I know, but an amateur writer has to take his breaks where he finds them...


More posts soon, I promise.

Ta, Nick.

Hey,where'd the darned expediency go?

"In my view, American Soto Zen is almost choking to death on the efficaciousless idea of "Just this.""

This from Mike Dosho Port's site "Wild Fox Zen." You know, I agree, though I would extend the sentiment to include our tiny Zen circles here in old Blighty (that's Britain in case you don't know.) I know that Zen has come along a bit since the early years in China, and that it's not all hitting each other on the head or yelling like nutcases at one another in the hope of enlightenment. But what you get a sense of in reading the koans and tales which make up Zen folklore is the sheer range of teaching methods available to those cunning old masters. Whether verbally or physically, using inanimate objects or object-lessons from Nature, it seemed that the really good teachers were those who were ready to knock down beliefs and challenge concepts wherever  they reared their tricksy heads.
Since enlightenment is now a dirty word, however, this kind of thing is writen off. This equates to a loss of biodiversity in the Zenosphere. "Enlightenment" was only ever ateching tool, one perfect for underlining spiritual pride and ideas of attainment.There are few teachers willing to deal with students expectations of enlightenment it seems. But aren't these heartfelt curiosities the perfect opportunity for a teaching to strike home? It takes real courage to put oneself forward in a mondo, and ask a question. If the answer is simply a verbal lecture, I wonder about the point of it...
Having said this, I know that teaching in the old school way would probably scare most people off; it would probably scare me off. But I wonder if the only answer is to prescribe zazen or samu no matter what the temperament or concern of the student? I'm not a teacher, so all this should be taken with a vat of salt. But think about Gutei: remarkable it seems, because his only answer was to hold up the finger in answer. But even he had to break a pattern in order to teach, and suddenly fingers were flying about like chopped grass.
"Present moment" "Just this" and yes, even zazen: all these have the potential to become staid and ineffective. So then what?

As I say, I'm not a teacher, and neither do I even have a formal teacher, so I am spectactularly ill-qualified to talk about any of this. But that doesn't usually stop me.
If zazen becomes our only method, expecially in Soto Zen, are we not in danger of fixing on it, getting stuck in it amd imagining it to be something special? Your thoughts, readers, would be appreciated.