When we mention Zen practice these days, we usually mean sitting in Zen meditation, or zazen. It was not always so. In Bodhidharma’s time, “practice” meant observing the Precepts in daily life, discerning to what degree our behavior is comporting to their admonitions. If memory serves, this is found in “The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma” by Bill Porter, AKA Red Pine.

Similarly, when we speak of studying the Dharma, we typically mean reading the written record. It was not always so. When Buddha was alive, the teachings were spoken. You literally had to go listen to live lectures and, later, memorized recitation, to hear the Dharma. This was apparently true of all teachings of all sects at that time; the oral tradition prevailed. It was some four centuries after the Buddha’s death, when his utterances were first committed to written form.

With the advent of the Internet we have many more opportunities to “hear the true dharma” — a Dogen coinage with a deeper meaning — as expounded by others in the form of podcasts such as UnMind, audiobooks and other modern marvels. But we have to call into question whether we are hearing the Dharma truly. Whether the meaning we extract from listening to the efforts of others to express this subtle and inconceivable teaching is anywhere near to the original meaning that the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, intended, or for that matter that of any of his many successors in India, China, Korea and Japan, and the other countries of origin.

I am not suggesting that we engage in a scholarly examination of the provenance and evolution of the Three Baskets — or Tripitaka in Sanskrit. I propose that we are challenged to attempt to render the meaning in the modern idiom, which involves extracting them from their original cultural context, and embedding them in ours, as well as expressing them in the vernacular, including the language of modern science and philosophy.

For one thing, this means divesting the ancient liturgical passages of jargon — primarily the obscure and seemingly mystical terms, mostly from Sanskrit — such as “samadhi” for example —  that some contemporary writers seem prone to sprinkle liberally throughout their publications. The downside to this tendency is that it creates an impression that the author actually knows what these terms mean, whether you, dear listener,understand them or not.

Another consideration is what is called the “theory-laden” aspect of the semantics of language, as well as our interpretation of direct perception. This conditions the impact that Zen masters’ behavior, as well as that of their “turning words” — in Japanese, wato — can have on their students. This concept was introduced to me by George Wrisley georgewrisley.com, a Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Georgia, author of texts on Dogen and Zen, who generously made several technical contributions to my books, “The Original Frontier” and “The Razorblade of Zen.”

Professor Wrisley pointed out that, in the now-famous records of Zen students’ exchanges with their masters, including extreme gestures they resorted to, in trying to help the student wake up to the reality of Zen — shock tactics such as shouting, and sometimes striking with a fist or staff — each student’s reaction to the abuse was entirely dependent upon their belief, or innate “theory,” that the teacher was enlightened, and so could “do no wrong,” to oversimplify the point.

Ordinarily, if someone hits you with a stick, your reaction would not be one of profound insight, and undying gratitude for the “grandmotherly kindness” of your abuser. Today it would likely trigger a lawsuit.

The ancient ancestors of Zen seem to have an intuitive grasp of the importance of language and its effect on our perception of reality, as indicated in lines from the early Ch’an poems, such as:

Darkness merges refined and common words

Brightness distinguishes clear and murky phrases

And:

Hearing the words understand the meaning

Do not establish standards of your own

In Zen, of course, experience comes first, expression a distant second. The interim state, and where we can get it wrong, consists in our interpretation of direct experience, both on the cushion and off. As another ancient Ch’an poem has it:

The meaning does not reside in the words

but a pivotal moment brings it forth

And yet another:

Although it is not constructed

it is not beyond words

Hopefully we have, or will have in future, experienced this pivotal moment. Meanwhile, we are dependent upon words to parse this teaching, and to express it, both to ourselves as well as to others. We can use words to encourage all to go beyond language, and even ordinary perception, in direct experience in zazen. In the face of this design intent of the Dharma, the past efforts to translate it into various languages, and the present effort to paraphrase it into the modern idiom, seem worth the time and trouble.

In this spirit, let me share with you my paraphrase of the Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra, or Great Heart of Wisdom Teaching, with which, hopefully, you are familiar. This is a work in progress, subject to revision.

The typographical layout available on the UnMind podcast page is designed to facilitate scanning and reading the text while chanting it aloud, usually accompanied by drum and gongs. You might follow it with your eyes, while you follow my words with your ears. In this way, you will absorb a multi-sensory experience, which may be more revealing than hearing or reading alone. I will simply recite it here, a capella:

ESSENTIAL TEACHING OF PERFECTING WISDOM

When any and all Awakening Beings

deeply and directly experience the process of perfecting wisdom,

they clearly see that all five traditional components of sentience

are fundamentally free of permanence and separate self-existence;

this insight relieves all unnecessary suffering.

Respected seekers of the truth, know that:

the apparent form of our world is not separate from its impermanence;

impermanence is not separable from appearances;

“form,” or particles of matter, is innately “emptiness,” or waves of energy;

conversely, emptiness is innately form.

All sensations, perceptions, and underlying mental formations,

as well as consciousness itself, also manifest as complementary.

All existent beings manifest elemental impermanence,

imperfection, and insubstantiality:

they neither arise nor cease, as they appear to do;

they are neither defiled nor pure, but nondual in their nature;

they neither increase nor decrease in value or merit.

Therefore know that, given the relativity of the material and immaterial,

there can be no fixity of form; no tangibility of sensation;

no persistence of perception; no infallibility of mental formations;

finally, there can be no absolute entity of consciousness.

More immediately, the principle of complementarity entails that there can be

no eyes, ears, nose, or tongue, as such; and thus, no body;

likewise there can be no “mind,” as a separate substance;

it follows that, in spite of appearances,

there can be no independent functions of

seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching;

nor can there be unconstructed objects of the mind;

no independent realm of sight, nor that of any other sense organ;

nor any realm of mind-consciousness as a whole.

This means that there can be neither ignorance in the absolute sense,

nor any extinction of ignorance in the relative sense.

Neither can there be sickness, old age and death as absolute states;

Nor any extinction of sickness, old age and death as relative states.

In light of the implications of this insight,

suffering intentionally inflicted upon oneself and / or others can come to an end,

stemming as it does from confusion as to root causes;

while natural suffering such as aging, sickness, and death cannot end.

Thus there can be no isolated “path” leading to cessation of suffering;

there can be no essential “knowledge” to gain, in any conclusive sense;

and no “attainment,” of any consequential kind.

Since there is nothing to attain,

all Awakening Beings rely totally on simply perfecting their wisdom;

their body-mind drops away, functioning fully with no further hindrances;

 with no dualistic hindrances, no root of fear is to be found;

far beyond confused worldviews,

they abide in nondual spiritual liberation.

All Awakening Ones of past, present, and future

rely on the perfecting of this deepest wisdom,

thereby attaining unsurpassed, complete, insight

and letting go of the attainment.

Rest assured that perfecting wisdom

is the most excellent method;

the serene and illuminating discipline; the unsurpassable teaching;

the incomparable means of mitigating all suffering;

and that this claim is true, not false.

We proclaim the transformational perfecting of wisdom:

Gone, gone to the other shore; attained the other shore; altogether beyond the other shore, having never left; the other shore comes to us; wisdom perfected!

I do not claim to have captured the essence of the original chant. The afore-mentioned Buddhist scholar and Ch’an translator Red Pine, in his modern translation “The Heart Sutra,” tells us that this condensed version of the larger sutra extolling the emptiness of all existence, including the Dharma, was published in China around 900 CE. This was done in order to counter a prevailing trend toward erudition as the indicator of enlightenment, a distortion of the true Dharma that has occurred more than once in history. Another famous example is that of Master Huineng, sixth ancestor in China, who publicly tore up copies of the sutras to make a similar point. Buddha-dharma is manifest in nondual reality as lived, not contained in writing as doctrine.

In a future segment of UnMind, we will take up another of my hopeful efforts at paraphrasing the Dharma. Meanwhile I encourage you to try your own hand — or more precisely, your mouth and mind — at putting one of the historical teachings into your own words. You might want to compose your own version of the Precepts, for example. When and if you do so, it may force you to consider the true meaning of these teachings which — through the sheer repetition of chanting them repeatedly over time — begin to sink into our stubborn monkey minds. But the downside of repetition is that they may become rote recitation, in which their deeper meaning and direct relevance to our contemporary lives may be lost.

Not to worry, however — combined with the nonverbal silence and deep stillness of zazen, where we can begin to experience the meaning of the expression — we cannot go far wrong.

After taking a hiatus this summer, we return to the political fray with an eye toward its implications for our lives and our pursuit of a more perfect union with the teachings of Zen. It is a good thing that we did not try to say anything about the campaign at the beginning of August, in light of the whiplash nature of rapid-fire developments on that front. Anything we had to say regarding predictions or outcomes would have been instantly irrelevant on a day-to-day basis, rendered moot by the exhaustive political melodrama playing out in the media.

One of my online dharma dialogs brought up the question of agency, as in how much effect can one person really have on the direction the country is moving as a whole, not to mention the looming consequences of climate change on a global scale. It may help in setting the context, to recall my model of the Four Fundamental Spheres – those arenas of activity and influence that we all encounter on a daily basis.  

The four spheres, visualized as nesting in a concentric array, start with the Personal at the center; surrounded by the Social, which includes the political; then the Natural sphere, the world of our surrounding planet and its atmosphere; and finally the Universal, extending into outer space. Our sense of agency and influence diminishes as we move outward from the Personal, inversely proportional to the influence of the surrounding spheres on our personal bubble. It is necessarily an asymmetrical relationship, an understatement of cosmic proportions.

Politics is the social sphere on steroids, we might say. It is a mixed blessing in that even those who emphasize our worst angels in the struggle to swing a majority, reveal, unintentionally, the dark underbelly of human nature. Which can be clarifying and even healthy, depending on what we do with it.

These days , many of my online dharma dialog calls, dokusan in Japanese, reveal the anxiety that comes with the uncertainty of living in “interesting times,” as in the ancient Chinese curse. We might prefer to ignore the political realm altogether, but unless you are willing to become a hermit and remove yourself from society in some extreme manner, you cannot avoid the consequences of the political actions taken by others, in the cultural hothouse of modern civilization, whether urban or rural. The question arises: Is Zen (& zazen) merely a coping strategy? Or is it only reinforcing our personal status-quo? Or, conversely, can it enable us to change and adapt?

I solicited suggestions for this reboot episode from my producer and publisher, the former being an American citizen currently living in the Southwest, the latter a Canadian living to the Northeast. Here is a sample of what they suggested:

I think there's something in here about a cautionary tale for people looking to religious leaders for signals on how to vote. I've seen some other Zen leaders on social media endorsing candidates - which is fine, but they wield a lot of power, and Zen really is about thinking for yourself on your cushion. Maybe religion is separate from politics, and that's ok. 

It also might be interesting to discuss how to have compassion for the “other” – be it democrat or republican – as one cannot exist without the other; and neither are really separate.

I was gratified to see the reference to my past emphasis in this series on the value of independent thinking, and engaging in interdependent action, which I propose is one of the outputs of Zen training. As opposed to co-dependent thinking and action, another way of characterizing the partisan divide. If we are developing the ability to think independently of the political forces impinging upon us, and the freedom to act interdependently with cohorts on both sides of the divide, then our Zen training can contribute to evolving the more perfect union that is given lip service in the social discourse.

Referring back to the previous UnMind series of three segments on aging, sickness and death, the Three Marks of Buddhism’s worldview, I want to reiterate that the paranoid style in politics seems most likely to stem from irrational fear of aging, sickness, and dying, the personal dimensions of the universal traits of anicca, dukkha, and anatta, or impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and no-self. When we throw the “Three Poisons” of greed, hatred, and delusion into the mix, the result is a true witch’s brew. This is the old “divide and conquer” strategy.

The question of how to have compassion for the “other” – be it democrat or republican – goes to a more non-dualistic reading of the seeming divide between irreconcilable opposites. When we look at what conservatives are trying to liberalize, and what liberals are trying to conserve, we see that the labels are not really getting to the essence of the conflict, but merely exacerbating it. The issue of factionalism was raised in the early founding documents of the American experiment as a potential threat to the republic, but since one party cannot exist without the other, and neither is really separate from the body politic, they are mutually defining, and can be complimentary. The real conflict goes to the personal dimension, where we find the question of: “How much is enough?”

How much is enough to live happily, and is there enough to go around? Are the global shortages of food, drinking water, clean air, housing, and the hierarchy of physical survival needs real, or are they the consequence of negligence and malfeasance on the part of greedy, profit-driven special interests?

Have we as a species been on a decades-long binge of “Hotel-California-everything-all-the-time” wretched excess and the bills are just now finally coming due? Can we all downsize our lifestyle to a level that relieves the burden of the disposable consumption society?  

When we look to the example of our forebears in the history of Zen, and, indeed, in the early days of democracy in America, going back no further than my grandparents’ generation, we can detect vestiges of a much more moderate way of living that recognized reasonable limits to the answer to how much is enough.

Of course there were contemporaneous avatars of wealth and power, living out the lifestyles and fantasies of the rich and famous. And the human slaves of earlier periods in history have been replaced by the “energy slaves” of modern technology, as Bucky Fuller pointed out. In that sense, wealth, as the commonwealth, has been redistributed more widely, but there is still an unseemly preoccupation in some quarters with amassing financial resources beyond the scope of what any one person, family, or corporate entity, can possibly need, or spend, within one lifetime. Except, perhaps, as a defensive reserve to defend against future lawsuits. Or, perhaps, to invest in initiatives for future cultural evolution. But do we really need to terraform Mars, for example, when we cannot even make the Earth function as our home planet?

Back to the personal sphere of meditation, and its connection to the social sphere of politics. If we accept the suggestion that our Zen practice is indeed a kind of generalized coping mechanism, it begs the question, Coping with what? Master Dogen asks, about two-thirds of the way through Fukanzazengi–Principles of Seated Meditation:

Now that you know the most important thing in Buddhism

      how can you be satisfied with the transient world?

Our bodies are like dew on the grass

      and our lives like a flash of lightning

Vanishing in a moment.    

By this point in the long tract of instructions on physical method and philosophical attitude he picked up in China, the first piece he published as a manual of meditation for his student followers, he has made perhaps a hundred different points about what is important in Buddhism. So what he means by “the most important thing” is subject to some interpretation. Just as it is in our modern milieu. What is, after all, the most important thing? Not just in meditation, but in all your daily actions, as Dogen emphasizes in the same writing.

Media mavens, including pre-digital traditional channels and ever-expanding post-digital modes, are constantly promoting what they want us to pay attention to as “news,” what they consider the most important events and issues of the moment in the 24-7 news cycle. Most of it is designed to capture eyeballs, ears, and clicks, in order to develop ratings that are used to rationalize the cost of ad buys and other kinds of participation in the public arena, or direct sales. Which items are delivered to your doorstep in ever-greater frequency with minimal effort on your part. Except for disposing of the mountain of packaging and shipping materials.

Turning our attention back to the cushion and the wall, the most important thing at the moment cannot be the passing pageantry of the political campaign. Unless you are running for office, or working for someone who is. One important thing is to understand or appreciate the importance of the political to the personal, in particular, your personal sphere. While the central personal dimensions of aging, sickness and death can definitely be affected – directly or indirectly, positively or negatively – by the political arena, it is not typically the most proximate cause of any of the three. And the last thing that you are likely to be thinking, on your death bed, is that you wished you had spent more time on politics.

Some ancient sage said to “stamp life-and-death on your forehead and never let it out of your mind.” I am sure he was not morbidly obsessed with death, but that his life, and ours, takes a major part of its central meaning, and sense of urgency, from the fact that birth is the leading cause of death. This, to many, would seem to be wrong.

But if you think about it – or as Dogen says, “examine thoroughly in practice” – this idea that something is wrong, it appears that it may only be our opinion. We may be wrong. Reality cannot be wrong. Nature cannot be wrong. But we may be wrong. Only we human beings can get this wrong. And then we blame others, turning against our fellow human and other sentient beings. As the Tao te Ching says, “When the blaming begins, there is no end to the blame.”

We can blame our situation, with some justification, on others, including the pols. But the blaming does not solve the basic problem. Perhaps this is getting at the most important thing. Accepting and admitting that the suffering in the world that may be considered wrong, or unnecessary, is caused exclusively by human beings, based on their assessment of their world as somehow “wrong.” This is the kind of suffering that can end, seen in the clear light of emptiness in zazen.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the last UnMind segment on “Election Year Zen,” we stressed Zen’s emphasis on thinking independently and acting interdependently, as a kind of rule of thumb for approaching the quadrennial campaign and politics in general. Returning to the main theme running through the UnMind podcast, the intersection of design thinking and Zen, the importance of independent thought and interdependent action to the future of Zen in America, and the world at large, takes on an even more central role. Especially in the context of Buddha’s teaching of the codependent origination of all things sentient – the comprehensive model of the Twelvefold Chain. Physics might agree that even the insentient universe is co-arisen, despite the singularity of the “Big Bang.”

The following thoughts were first shared in my opening remarks for the Silent Thunder Order’s annual conference in 2022, themed “Clarifying Interdependence.” The title of my address was “Future Zen: Thinking Independently; Acting Interdependently”

Buddha himself was clearly an independent thinker, the original Order of monks and nuns, an example of interdependent action, choosing to relinquish their place in the social order and hierarchy of the time, with its rigid caste system. Buddha was also a problem-solver of the highest order, having defined the problem of existence itself in terms of suffering, and prescribed a solution based on the real-world context, articulated as the Middle Way, and modeled as the Four Noble Truths, including the Eightfold Path as the plan of action.

Simply stated, the propagation of genuine Soto Zen practice in America is the logical extension of that plan, but in order to realize that potential, we must adapt the design intent of the Zen mission to the cultural and technological evolution that has taken place over two-and-a-half millennia. Nevertheless, the basic challenge to practice has remained the same. As we chant in the Dharma opening verse:

The unsurpassed, profound and wonderous Dharma is rarely met with

            even in a hundred thousand million kalpas.

Now we can see and hear it, accept and maintain it.

May we unfold the meaning of the Tathagata’s truth.

Accepting that the unsurpassed Dharma is rarely realized, even under the best of circumstances, we proceed with the Zen mission with lowered expectations, commensurate with geometrically expanded distractions currently on offer. These days, Buddha would not draw the typical crowd that attends a professional sports venue, nor even smaller concert venues. He might attract a considerable following online, however.

Seeing and hearing the Dharma is now often first encountered online, via searching the plethora of web sites devoted to posting the teachings of Buddha and his successors, by following podcasts, or downloading audiobooks. “Doing your research,” as we say. For my generation, television may have been the medium in which one first discovered the hoofprints of the ox, in the form of the “Kung Fu” series of the 1970s.

Seeing and hearing the true Dharma – as well as accepting and maintaining it – is still, however, a low-tech enterprise, requiring only the instrument of the human body, sitting upright and still in meditation. Unfolding the meaning of it, however, is another matter altogether, a near-impossible order of difficulty. In effect, it has to reveal itself to us.

Meanwhile, we face a variety of conflicting interpretations of Zen, from the cultural milieu and idioms of today. For example, Zen is not really, or merely, a social program, as many of its proponents seem to feel. Interdependent action certainly entails the recognition of suffering in the form of social injustice, and the principle of karmic retribution does not explain or justify ignoring the suffering of others. The teachings of Buddhism are meant, first and foremost, to provide a mirror to ourselves, reflecting the good, bad, and the ugly without discrimination; focusing our attention upon our own follies, foibles, and foolishness; definitely not to be held up to criticize others.

Our implementation of the “design of Zen” to-date – including the incorporation of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center (ASZC) in 1977, and the umbrella organization of the Silent Thunder Order (STO) in 2010 – has been intended to establish and maintain a stable training center, along with a service organization as we attracted affiliate centers, to facilitate the process of propagating what is called “Dogen Zen,” with the same intent of its 13thcentury founder, and his successors, especially Keizan Jokin Zenji.

I use the term “design,” as this has been an intentional design process. ASZC is the home temple & training center of the STO network of affiliates, resulting from a group process of the individual efforts, financial support, and community service of hundreds of people over the past half-century or so. In carrying out this design intent, we are extending the legacy and lineage of our founding teacher, Matsuoka-roshi, who would frequently remind us that “Zen is always contemporary.” In a book surveying the origins of Zen in America, “Zen Master Who?” (2006), by James Ishmael Ford, we learn:

Soyu Matsuoka ranks with Nyogen Sengaki and Sokei-an as one of the first teachers to make his home and life work in North America. He also seems to be the first teacher to clearly and unambiguously give Dharma transmission to Western students.

I would add that these pioneers of American Zen also belong in the rarified ranks of those ancestors who traveled great distances and crossed cultural boundaries to bring the genuine practice to another country, a whole other continent, like Bodhidharma, and Dogen Zenji.

Sensei, as he modestly asked us to call him, also is credited with opening the first Zen meditation hall, or zendo, for westerners. Needless to say, I was one of those Western students he transmitted, though he did so informally, rather than by the formal standards of Soto Shu, the headquarters in Japan. We inherit his estimable legacy and lineage, as well as those of the Kodo Sawaki-Uchiyama lineage, thanks to Shohaku Okumura-roshi. We also enjoy a link to that of Shunryu Suzuki-roshi through Seirin Barbara Kohn-roshi, who graciously agreed to be my Preceptor for my formal Transmission, or “Shiho” ceremony, after hosting my 90-day training period at Austin Zen Center in 2007. We may be somewhat unique in the American Zen cohort, having received formal recognition from three recognized priests, including pre- and post-WWII generation Japanese patriarchs, as well as an American Zen matriarch. Let us do what we can to honor our predecessors. We honor them most appropriately by thinking independently and acting interdependently.

Before considering the future of Zen in America, we could do worse than to take a look at its past.

In the Shobogenzo Zuimonki, collected and compiled under the direction of one of his dharma successors, Koun Ejo Zenji, some of Master Dogen’s more offhand comments and spontaneous inspirations are recorded, apparently with little editing, much like our publications of “The Kyosaku” and “Mokurai,” the collected talks of O-Sensei.

Dogen instructed,

4 — 13

It is said in the secular world that a castle falls when people start to whisper words within its walls. It is also said that when there are two opinions in a house, not even a pin can be bought; when there is no conflict of opinions, even gold can be purchased.

Even in the secular world, it is said that unity of mind is necessary for the sake of maintaining a household or protecting a castle. If unity is lacking, the house or the castle will eventually fall. Much more, should monks who have left home to study under a single teacher be harmonious like the mixture of water and milk. There is also the precept of the six ways of harmony.* Do not set up individual rooms, nor practice the Way separately either physically or mentally. [Our life in this monastery is] like crossing the ocean on a single ship. We should have unity of mind, conduct ourselves in the same way, give advice to each other to reform each other’s faults, follow the good points of others, and practice the Way single-mindedly. This is the Way people have been practicing since the time of the Buddha.

Echoes of Honest Abe’s house divided against itself… a footnote explains the “six ways” reference:

*The unity of the three actions – those of body, mouth, and mind, keeping the same precepts, having the same insight, and carrying on the same practice.

This same precepts, insight and practice includes the harmony of sameness and difference, not an absolute identity. The milk-and-water bit reminds me of Sri Ramakrishna’s expression that, like the swan, you have to be able to drink only the milk, mixed with water, to grasp the truth of this existence. This is the nonduality of duality.

So here is the great unifying principle underlying Zen practice from the time of Buddha and Dogen down to the present. The past is prologue to the present, as is the present to the future, of Zen. This may not be true of our contemporary cultural and political institutions, however, as we are witnessing. Let us turn to Zen for something more substantial to hang our hopes on for the future.

We will have to leave it here for now. Be sure to join us for the next three segments of UnMind, which will round out this contemporary take on the design intent of future Zen.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the last episode of UnMind, we concluded our review of the design intent of the Three Treasures of Buddhism. In this segment, we return to the current state of the campaign for political leadership of the country. My intent in these essays regarding the practice of Zen in an election year cycle is not to persuade or convince anyone of anything, other than the efficacy of sitting in zazen to straighten this mess out for yourself.  I will try to make the case that it ‑ the political discourse ‑ is not at all disconnected from the Three Treasures. After all, the design of the three branches of government, and even partisan politics, are nothing more than manifestations of the community writ large – however subject to manipulation and distortion by special interest groups and individuals who may not honor the harmony of the larger Sangha, as their highest ideal.  

To be clear, I am not interested in getting out the vote, or influencing your vote. I regard politics as only one of the multifarious – and perhaps nefarious – arenas of civic action available to us in modern times. But because the unremitting and relentless campaign is currently taking all the oxygen out of the air, and threatens to do so for some time, more than ever should we turn to our own council, and tend to our own knitting, on the cushion. Zen meditation provides a safe haven, a dependable redoubt, for refreshing our resolve to take action in the most compassionate way, but informed by the wisdom of the ancestors. The political pageantry of the moment is subject to the cardinal marks of dukkha – impermanence, imperfection and insubstantiality – perhaps more than any other dimension of existence. We can regret, or rejoice, at its passing.

It is also a given that most of those in positions of power and influence do not have the wisdom and compassion of the Dharma forming their guiding principles, nor even that of the founding documents of the republic. Nor can we claim that the clarity of Buddha’s wisdom, or buddha-nature, resides at the heart of the American cult of the individual.

In spite of the complexity, confusion, and downright contrariness of human nature, in coming to terms with the polity, I think I speak for all the ancestors of Zen in saying that our recommendation remains the same, regarding the spectrum, or spectacle, of governance across the countries of the globe, and the span of centuries since the advent of Buddhism in India.

Physical samadhi is first in priority – more centered and balanced, less off-kilter, in the form of sitting upright and still, in zazen as well as kinhin, walking meditation. Then follows emotional samadhi – manifesting as more calmness, less anxiety. Then mental samadhi – fostering more clarity and less confusion, especially as to the deeper meaning and ramifications of the compassionate teachings. And finally, social samadhi – finding more harmony and less friction, in personal and social relationships. Girding our loins, as it were, with the “sword of Manjusri,” cutting through delusion, and reentering the marketplace with bliss-bestowing hands.

By starting at the center of things, the personal sphere, eventually we may find our way in the social, natural, and even the universal spheres of influence that surround us, bringing the eyes and ears, and helping hands, of the bodhisattva to bear upon the suffering of the world. A large dollop of humility, and perhaps a healthy sense of humor, may be in order.       

We have introduced the notion that what we are doing in Zen training is, after all, only developing our penchant for independent thinking, along with its counterpart, a capacity for interdependent action. This is the tightrope we walk, while keeping all the balls in the air, of the many influences surrounding us. The nexus of near-infinite causes and conditions can bring about analysis paralysis if we succumb to the usual approach to defining and solving problems based on self-defense. What is called for is recognition and acceptance of the Japanese proverb cited by Master Dogen: “Fall down seven times; get up eight!” We need to give ourselves permission to fail in the social realm.

Partisanship in politics requires that we suspend independent thinking. We are often  prevailed upon to subscribe to views and opinions that may not be fully vetted  or justified, in order to take advantage of the opportunities of the moment, to win over sufficient numbers of voters to the cause. But when we examine the sources of the ideological divide, it seems that underlying factors, which would fall into the skandha of “mental formations,’ or unconscious volition, may play a greater role than we think.

Further to the point, a recent article in the New York Times by Neil Gross, a professor of sociology at Colby College, titled “Are You Thinking for Yourself?” approached the problem of ideological division from a demographical perspective:

If you’re trying to guess whether people are Republicans or Democrats, knowing a few basic facts about them will take you a long way. What’s their race and gender? How far did they get in school? What part of the country do they live in and is their community urban, suburban, or rural? 

He goes on to support the point with examples, which we will not detail here. His basic conclusion is that your demographics often determine what you believe, in regards to your general worldview, as well as political leanings. A seemingly determinative factor is that of the influence of parents and family. A majority of partisans of the new generation reflect the ideology of their parentage, apparently going back for generations.

From this we might conclude that the vast majority of voters are going to be biased in favor of their family and social history from childhood – nature and nurture – and not likely to be persuaded by rational or ideological argument to switch allegiances. This suggests that the majority of campaign messages and ads attempting to sway so-called independents and moderates to join one camp or another may be a waste of time and money. It might be more effective to track the generational histories of constituencies, homing in on the genetically captive audience, known colloquially as “the base.” New coalitions may be limited by this unseen dimension, holding steady through generations.

Please indulge an exercise involving simple mathematics, something we do not often engage in to make a point about Zen, or the teachings of Buddhism. But we have to admit that a major factor in differentiating our lives and times from those of our Zen ancestors is the burgeoning population and geometrically expanding demographics of the modern age. Pardon me while I “do the math,” with an assist from my onboard calculator, using search results from online sources, both inaccessible to the ancients.

The current US population is estimated at about 333 million, of which roughly 240 million, or 72% of the total, are eligible to vote. In 2020, around 66% of those eligible actually registered and voted, a record, but representative of less than 50% of the total population. The Democrat candidate won the election with a little over 51% of the vote, while the Republican candidate lost, with about 47% of the vote.  Political spending in the 2020 election totaled $14.4 billion – more than doubling the total cost of the also record-breaking 2016 cycle – according to opensecrets.org. So the last victory came at a cost of about $2000 a vote, if my math is correct.

Even though a record 60-plus percent of eligible voters turned out in the 2020 election, the final decision was made by a miniscule fraction – 0.03% -- of the total, assuming the count was accurate, and that my math is close enough for jazz. Throw in the electoral college, with its handful of “swing states,” and the final decision comes down to a cohort less than the population of the metro area of Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas.

Yet the winners (and losers) not only endeavor to rewrite history to favor their cause, they also claim to enjoy the mandate of “the American people,” a tiny portion of whom actually put them in office. Or threw them out.

The losing side famously claimed the election was stolen through voter fraud, though the electoral college tally came in at 306 to 232, a decisive difference, along with the overage of multiple millions of voters in the popular vote. But, as we hasten to say, that’s a story for another day. Who are we to argue the truth of politics? Zen calls upon us to challenge the truth of our very senses!

So we have to look at whatever leaders we get as being “the leaders we deserve,” in the context of a system demonstrably incapable of representing the “will of the people,” let alone “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” The fact that a large percentage opt out, and others are disenfranchised, belies a foundational tenet of the democratic republic: “one man-one vote.” This remains an ideal, one that may be forever out of reach, even with our vaunted technical connectivity. It may come down to a matter of free will, or the inexorable ignorance of the modern hoi polloi. Nobody is legally required to vote, after all, which may be a good thing. Further into the article, Gross generalizes:

Although there are certainly people whose politics defy generalization, the underlying demographic tendencies are powerful predictors of belief – powerful enough that elections have become as much a turnout game as an exercise in persuasion.

Do tell. But if it takes $2 grand a pop to get a single person to the polls, one has to question whether it is possible to turn that massive a “push” into a “pull,” to borrow from marketing terminology. Of course, there are those who would question whether it is wise to target people who are disinclined to vote in the first place. How informed would their choices likely be, if they are finally dragged out of their inertia, and into the polls?   

Gross concludes his essay with a turn to something deeper, the humanity underlying our behavior, including political activism:

By all means, let’s duke it out in the public sphere and at the ballot box. You’ll fight for you interests and I’ll fight for mine. That’s democracy in a big, diverse, boisterous nation.

            But if we could bear in mind that we sometimes stumble into our most passionately held beliefs, the tenor of our discourse might be a bit saner and more cordial. The fact that we are all deeply social creatures, in  politics and otherwise, underscores our shared humanity – something that we would be wise to never lose sight of.

Whether or not you agree with the implicit assumption that making the tenor of our public discourse saner and more cordial would be a good thing – many seem to feel the opposite, that the squeakier the wheel, the more grease it will get – most would probably agree with the appeal to our shared humanity, and recognize the lamentable truism of frequently stumbling into our most passionately held beliefs.

Aye, there’s the rub – that our actions within the social sphere, including the political arena, are too often based on belief, rather than reality. Here is where Zen comes in.

The deeper implicit assumption is that our shared humanity is necessarily a good thing. But I think Buddhism points to something deeper. We do not aspire to human nature in Zen – we aspire to buddha nature. Meaning to wake up to the deeper meaning and implications of our lives – our very existence – beyond the immediate and local causes and conditions impinging upon us, including the political machinations of our fellow travelers.

Again, my intent in these essays is to emphasize the necessity of the practice of Zen in an election year cycle, not to persuade you of anything, other than the efficacy of sitting in zazen to straighten this mess out for yourself. That said, or resaid, I do encourage you to vote. You will make the right choice, informed by your meditation, I am sure.

In the next episode of UnMind, we will return to considerations of more broadly focused adaptation of design thinking principles of problem definition and potential solutions in everyday life, of which politics is only one, if one of the most noisy and noisome.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the last two episodes of UnMind, we continued our review of the design intent of the Three Treasures of Buddhism, first focusing on joining the Sangha, or Zen community; then on studying the Dharma. In this segment, we will analyze practicing what Buddha himself did, the central and indispensable method of Zen’s meditation.

I have written extensively elsewhere on how zazen differs from other styles of meditation. Herein we will examine its more physical aspects, and how they may help determine its effectiveness. While the other two legs of the Buddhist stool are necessary for a well-balanced Zen life on social and intellectual levels, zazen is the most crucial and pivotal practice on the personal level. According to Soto Zen, upright seated mediation is necessary to open the Dharma gate to genuine insight. It is Dogen’s “excellent method,” that he asserted “carries on the Buddha’s teaching endlessly.”

When we examine in minute detail the sitting posture, the full breathing cycle, and the focus of attention recommended in zazen, we cannot help but feel incredulous at its simplicity, that something so basic and simple as sitting still enough, upright enough, and long enough, could have any substantive effect on consciousness itself.

When it comes to design intent, usually we can look for ways to tweak the design of a given product or process, here and there, to see if we can improve it. Zazen is already so simple that those tweaks have been done, and long ago. There is not much to the method that can be further refined, or eliminated. The zafu itself, the sitting cushion, is likewise nearly irreducibly simple, a design presumably first developed in China.

In production processes used to implement various design-build systems, we look for what are termed “secondary” operations. They may force changes in the setup of the assembly line; or call for additional equipment; or require multiple phases. We may find that we can eliminate certain of these extra steps, or combine them with other operations, to make the process more efficient, i.e. streamlined.  Early examples include the Ford assembly line. It is important to arrange the steps in any production process in the proper sequence, to avoid wasted time and motion. A technical early version of this approach is called “critical path management,” or CPM. One of its terms, the “true antecedent,” a critical piece in getting the sequence right, might apply to Zen.

What would be the true antecedent to insight ‑ Buddha’s awakening ‑ to take the least obvious, but penultimate example? In Soto Zen, we would lobby for zazen, probably. But, as Bodhidharma is credited with saying, meditation it is not absolutely necessary to insight. He indicated that all one has to do is “grasp the vital principle.” In other words, no causal connection can be dependably established between the act of sitting in zazen, and the triggering of Dharmic insight. It happens that most of us are not ripe and ready enough for that level of grasping, and we are carrying a lot of conceptual weight, so we need to spend some time in our meditation, to jettison the excess baggage.

The great Indian sage is also recognized for bringing the direct practice of zazen to China. He created a model during meditation of four levels of observation: the breath; physical sensations; emotional sensations or mood swings; and conceptual constructions. Notably, his four-pointed model is in itself such a construction. One conclusion that he drew from this approach is that, like the breath, we realize that the other three dimensions are impermanent, ever-changing. And so must be the observer.      

Using Matsuoka-roshi’s threefold division into what he termed “dispositions” – posture, breath, and attention – we can examine them one at a time to determine their design intent. A caveat: “design intent” is more tightly focused than intent in general. It is connected to function, as in the old design saw coined by 19th Century architect Louis H. Sullivan, “form follows function.” Of course, our larger or deeper intent in practicing Zen goes to the Buddhist skandha of “mental formations,” sometimes rendered as intention, motive or desire; the multivarious purposes underlying the “three actions” of body, mouth, and mind. That may be a subject for another time.

For now, let’s begin by looking at the posture. Of the four cardinal postures – standing, sitting, walking, or lying down, as mentioned in the Metta Sutta – why would sitting be the posture of choice for meditation? For one, it is obviously the most efficient in terms of energy consumption, other than lying down, compared to which, sitting is more conducive to alertness, as we are accustomed to sleeping in a horizontal position.

The upright aspect of the sitting posture is crucial. Aligning our bilaterally symmetrical skeleton and musculature is the most direct way to achieve equipoise, a state of equilibrium within the forcefield of gravity. When the body is arrayed in this position, the spine and spinal cord become our “zero axis” in spacetime, the center of our being in the matrix of the proximate physical causes and conditions of existence. This is the physical basis of “samadhi” ‑ centeredness and balance ‑ the key to entering stillness.

Arching the small of the back, and pulling back on the chin, we establish two pressure-points, one at the base of the spine and one the base of the neck, which pull the spine into its natural s-curve, resulting in what Matsuoka-roshi described as a “sitting-mountain feeling,” one of immense stability. He would comment that when the posture is reaching a state of perfection, it feels as if you are pushing the crown of your head against the ceiling, like a column or post. But with the caveat that we always aim at the perfect posture, never imagining that we have achieved it.

Standing shares this upright alignment, but the entire weight of the body is delivered to the roughly square foot of the surface area of the feet and ankles, rather than distributed over the three-pointed base of the cross-legged posture (“full lotus,” J. kekka fuza), or similarly, the kneeling posture (J. seiza). Walking is obviously infinitely more complex, though walking meditation (J. kinhin) is certainly effective, dubbed “zazen in motion.”

Minimal supporting gear is the one concession that Zen seems to make to our natural desire for physical comfort, perching on a cushion (J. zafu) on top of a square mat (J. zabuton) or kneeling on the seiza bench. But I think the lift has to do with maintaining the proper disposition of the angle between the upright spine and the body’s main hinge at the hip joint. We sit slightly forward on the cushion or chair so that the hips are above the knees, at an angle of about 10 or 15 degrees to the floor. This allows the weight of the trunk and upper body to distribute equally between the knees resting on the mat and the “sitz” bones that form the bottom of the pelvis.

These two arching protuberances form a kind of built-in rocking chair, which, when the lower back is properly arched, provides a stable base on the cushion or kneeling bench, as well as on a chair. In the cross-legged postures in particular, when resistance arises in the knees or in the back, it is our body telling us that we are pitched too far forward, in the former case, or leaning too far backward, in the latter. Matsuoka-roshi often noted that we have to keep making small adjustments to the posture over time, “working your way through every bone in your body,” to finally find that “sweet spot” right in the middle.  

The rocking motion that we are encouraged to engage at the beginning and end of each session of zazen helps us find the center of the upright and balanced posture. Starting with a large, arcing pendulum swing to the left and right, forward and back, and / or around in circle, we gradually decrease the length of the arc to a smaller and smaller swing, or spiral, until it comes to center. In this way we can correct our own posture from time to time, and particularly when first settling into the posture. It also allows for the body’s muscles and connective hard tissue to stretch and adapt for the greatest level of comfort. Zazen, as we say, should be the “comfortable way.”

Reversing this motion at the end of the sit, starting with a small, then gradually larger pendulum swing, allows the body to loosen up, and relieve any numbness that may have set in during the session. Numbness does not necessarily indicate poor circulation, but the natural adaptation of the body to sitting still for long periods of time.

In summary, we are looking to recover, or rediscover, the natural posture. In more primitive times, our ancestors sat around the campfire, sitting upright and still while hunting, in order not to spook the prey. Your body knows this posture. Listen to it. The design intent of the zazen posture is, in one sense, to return to our normal, natural posture, while remaining fully alert.

The same may be said of the breath. The natural breath adapts to the pressures of the moment. When walking or running, we palpitate, breathing rapidly, and often, irregularly. When we lie down to sleep, our breath slows down to a more regular rhythm. Sitting in zazen is a bit like falling asleep while staying awake.

Our body knows this natural breath, just as it knows the upright, balanced posture. In zazen, we relinquish our usual effort to control the body in terms of resistance to pain, allowing ourselves to go beyond our normal comfort zone. Likewise, we drop our tendency to control the breath, other than occasionally counting it, or some other measure of inducing more strict observation. We begin to see the breath slowing down as the body settles into stillness. If we pay close attention, we can feel our heartbeat slowing as well. We enter into a deeper stillness, our more natural state of being.

While adjustments to the posture are primarily physical, we move beyond the purely physical as we turn our attention to the breath and attention itself. Traditional zazen instructions emphasize attitudinal adjustments, observing the natural process of breathing and thinking with scientific detachment, and less controlling impulses. This is especially helpful in dealing with the tendency of discriminating mind (S. citta) to vacillate, from one extreme position to another, just as the breath is continually shifting from inhaling to exhaling. We are all bi-polar to some extent. The analytical function of the mind is skewed toward self-survival, triggering the so-called “monkey mind,” that frantic, chattering creature behind the all-too-familiar internal dialog.

The idea of “breath control” is ingrained in the culture, perhaps primarily through the popularization of yoga in the West, but also incorporated in such areas of endeavor as athletics, aerobic exercise, and technical training in singing, or playing wind instruments. The body is actually controlling the breath, in a subliminal context of oxygen deprivation relative to the degree of physical exertion involved in sitting, standing, walking, or lying down, exercising or running, as the case may be. Our degree of control over the breath on a conscious, intentional level is minimal. The main reason Zen meditation asks us to focus our attention on the breath is that, usually, we do not. Raising awareness of the cycle of breathing ‑ which is, after all, our main lifeline ‑ returns our attention to what is most important in life. The heartbeat represents a deeper level, the metronome of life. 

When we turn our attention to attention itself, we have reached the apogee of attention, having come full circle. Now, we are paying attention to attention itself. Here is where we begin to see the genius of Tozan Ryokai’s cryptic: “Although it is not constructed, it is not beyond words; like facing a precious mirror, form and reflection behold each other.”

Bodhidharma was not contemplating the wall, as the visiting pundits of China thought; he was contemplating nothing in particular, everything in general. Or we might say he was contemplating contemplation itself. The “self selfing self,” as Uchiyama-roshi termed it, in his unique turn-of-a-phrase, conjuring a “turning phrase” (J. wato) to describe the indescribable, the ineffable essence of objectless meditation (J. shikantaza).

Here, once again, we have come to the end of language. As I closed the session on the design intent of Dharma, Buddhism’s truth is uniquely experiential. Master Dogen’s intent is the same as that of all Zen ancestors past, future, and present: apprising us of the futility of pursuing literal, linear understanding, especially in its manifestation as verbal expression. We are to turn our attention, instead, to the immediate and intimate, dropping away of the self of body and mind, before interpretation can interfere.

For more detail on Zen’s meditative approach to posture, breath and attention, listen to UnMind podcasts #119, #120 and #121.

In the next segment, we will return to examining the passing pageantry of the endless, unremitting quadrennial, election-year campaign, from the unique perspective of Zen Buddhism.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the last segment of UnMind, we took up the most social of the Three Treasures: Sangha, or community. In this segment, we will continue with our analysis of the design of Dharma study; and in the next, that of Buddha practice, Zen’s unique meditation, or zazen. These three constitute the highest values and manifestations of Buddhism in the real world, and the simplest model for the comprehensive nature of living a Zen life. They are regarded as three legs, without any one of which the stool of Zen is unstable. Design intent is reflected in their modus operandi, message, and method, respectively.

Dharma study consists in reviewing and contemplating the “compassionate teachings,” the message transmitted by Shakyamuni and the ancestors down to the present day. While they were all, in effect, “speaking with one voice,” nonetheless Dharma ranks second in importance and emphasis, as an adjunct to meditation, just as Sangha comes in third, in providing the harmonious community and conducive environment for Zen. As referenced in Dogen’s Jijuyu Zammai – Self-fulfilling Samadhi:

Grass, trees and walls bring forth the teaching for all beings

Common people as well as sages

The “walls” are the infrastructure that was built around personal and communal practice in the form of our sitting space at home, grass hut hermitages, and meditation halls of  temples, centers, or monasteries. This is the millennia-old design-build activity of the ancestors attested to by the stupas of India and the monasteries of China, Tibet, Japan, and the Far East, the legacy inherited by modern proponents of Zen in the West.

Dharma likewise has been codified, collected, and contained in tangible documents, originally in the form of rice paper scrolls, now in books distributed worldwide in hardbound and paperback format. My own two current volumes in print ‑ “The Original Frontier” and “The Razorblade of Zen” ‑ were actually printed and bound in India, the home country of Buddhism They are also, or will soon be, available in electronic form, as eBooks and audiobooks accessible to virtually anyone, anywhere, anytime.

It is as if Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion – s/he of the innumerable eyes and ears needed to see and hear the sights and sounds of dukkha in the world, with innumerable arms and hands bringing the tools necessary to help ‑ has come to be manifested globally, in the form of the worldwide network of mobile media. By means of which her ongoing witness to the suffering of the world is also recorded for posterity. Thus, the potential for Dharma to have an effect on the world at large has expanded exponentially, as in the vow: “I take refuge in Dharma, the compassionate teachings.”

Taking refuge in the Dharma means returning ‑ or “fleeing back” ‑ to the original truths or laws of existence, and our place in it. Consider what the first teachings of Buddha really had to say, and what was their intended effect upon the audience. The First Sermon lays out the essential logic of the Middle Way, and its avoidance of extremes of attitudes and approaches to the fundamental problem of existence as a sentient, human being.

The design intent of the Dharma as expounded by Shakyamuni Buddha, was, as far as we can determine from the written record, to correct the conventional wisdom of the time, which I take to have been primarily based on beliefs and doctrines of Hinduism. One well-known example is his teaching of anatta or anatman, a refutation of the Hindu belief in a self-existent soul, or atman. Not being a scholar, I am basing this on my scant study of the canon and the opinion of others more learned than I.

Considering how the Dharma was first shared gives us an insight more technically oriented to the intent of its design. In the beginning was the spoken word of Siddhartha Gautama, similar to the Bible’s creation story. Buddha never committed a single word to paper, or so we are told. It is also said that he “never spoke a word,” a comment I take to mean that while language can point at the truths of Buddhism, it cannot capture them. Buddhist truth is uniquely experiential. It has to go through a kind of translation into language that is beyond language itself, as in the last stanza of Hsinhsinming‑Trust in Mind:

Words! The Way is beyond language for in it

there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today

Later given the honorifics of “Buddha, ‑ fully awakened one” and “Shakyamuni ‑ sage of the Shakya clan,” and others, ten in total, Siddhartha’s First Sermon to the five ascetics with whom he had been practicing, begins with:

O monks, these two extremes ought not be followed by one

going forth from the household life. What are the two?

There is devotion to the indulgence of self-gratification

Which is low, common, the way of ordinary people

Unworthy and unprofitable

There is devotion to the indulgence of self-mortification

Which is painful unworthy and unprofitable

Avoiding both these extremes the Tathagata has realized the Middle Way

It gives vision it gives knowledge and it leads to calm to insight to awakening to Nirvana

The intent of the content was to dissuade these monks from continuing to follow the dictates of their method of asceticism, which Buddha had found to be ineffective, to say the least. And to hold out the hope that if they were able to relinquish their own opinions of the truth they were seeking, and the method for apprehending it, they would be able to accede to the insight that he had experienced directly in meditation, the “middle way.”

“Tathagata,” by the way, is also one of the ten honorifics accorded to Buddha later in the course of his teaching career, meaning something like the “thus-come one.” It was most likely appended to this narrative when finally committed to written form, some four centuries after-the-fact.

But our point is that the spoken language was the medium in which the teaching was first shared. Buddha was said to have spoken Pali, which is similar to, and perhaps a dialect of, Sanskrit. The theory I have heard explaining why they were not recorded in written form is that they were considered sacred, and writing them down would have made them vulnerable to accidental or intentional change. The oral tradition was more dependable in terms of preserving them with their original intent intact.

So the “design intent” of Buddha’s use of kind or loving speech was not the usual intent of language in general. It was intended to encourage others to apprehend the “Great Matter” of life-and-death in the most direct way, the only way, possible. Buddha recognized that there was no way of sharing his experience with others in the ordinary sense, so he resorted to parables and analogies, to allow his audience to see themselves in the pictures he painted, and to transcend ordinary understanding in words and phrases, or the pursuit of information, the usual application of language.

The later codifying and organization of the original spoken teachings into the Tripitaka or “three baskets” was designed to allow teachers and students to study the voluminous canon in an orderly way, and to prioritize their approach to it in digestible bites. It was most likely understood that the existing literature of the time ‑ which had to be scarce, compared to today’s glut of publications – was to be absorbed in concert with practicing the meditation that had led to Buddha’s insight to begin with. As Master Dogen reminds:

Now all ancestors and all buddhas who uphold buddha-dharma

            have made it the true path of enlightenment to sit upright

            practicing in the midst of self-fulfilling samadhi

Those who attained enlightenment in India and China followed this way

It was done so because teachers and disciples

            personally transmitted this excellent method

            as the essence of the teaching

In the authentic tradition of our teaching

            it is said that this directly transmitted straightforward buddha- dharma is the unsurpassable of the unsurpassable

The design intent of the teachings has been, from the very beginning, the direct transmission of the buddha-dharma, what Matsuoka-roshi referred to as “living Zen.” In the daily lives of monks and nuns, frequent repetition of chanting selected teachings enabled the monastics to deeply assimilate them. Master Dogen was known for connecting each and every regular daily routine with brief recitations, such as the Meal Verse, in order to bridge the gap between the sacred and the profane, the physical and the spiritual.

Codification of the koan collections of Rinzai Zen ‑ some 1700 strong according to tradition, later organized into five sets by Hakuin Ekaku Zenji, the 18th Century Rinzai master ‑ represent design efforts to structure the lore and legacy of Zen’s anecdotal history of exchanges between masters and students available in progressive levels of difficulty, enabling accessibility of the apparent dichotomies of Dharma. Soto Zen simplifies the approach even further by regarding zazen itself as representing the living koan, requiring nothing further to complement, or complicate, the process of insight.

All the various models of buddha-dharma developed by the ancients qualify as efforts in information design ‑ visualizing images and what is called “pattern-thinking” ‑ that allow us to grasp the form of the Dharma beyond what mere words can convey. The Four Noble Truths comprise the first historical example of these descriptive models, including the prescriptive Noble Eightfold Path. Tozan’s “Five Ranks” and Rinzai’s “Host and Guest” come later, but have the same design intent – to help their students get beyond the limitation of the linear nature of language. My semantic models of the teachings, published in “The Razorblade of Zen,” represent more contemporary cases in point.

Nowadays ‑ as testimonial evidence indicates, from one-on-one encounters in online and in-person dharma dialogs with modern students of the Way ‑ people are no longer studying buddha-dharma as they may have throughout history, when documents were rare. More often than not, they are reading more than one book at a time, in a nonlinear process I refer to as “cross-coupling”: simultaneously absorbing commentaries from one author or translator along with others; or perhaps comparing the teachings of more than one ancestor of Zen to those of a different ancestor.

This may be an artifact or anomaly of the ubiquitous presence and availability of Zen material in print form, as well as the encyclopedic scope of online resources on offer today. It seems that in every category, and every language, we have at our fingertips a greater textual resource than ever conceivable in history, dwarfing the great libraries of legend. We can “google” virtually anything – no pun - with a few strokes of a keyboard. In addition, Artificial Intelligence threatens to bring together summaries and concoctions of content at the whim of any researcher; documents are readily searchable for those who wish to quantify uses of words and phrases at any point in history, teasing out trends and making judgments as to the hidden patterns in historical evolution of ideas.

In this context it is difficult to ascertain the design intent of dharma as articulated today. It is not easy to discern the intent of the publish-or-perish, rush-into-print crowd, or to judge whether a given piece of contemporary writing is worth our effort and time to read.

Fortunately, Zen offers a wormhole out of this literary catch-22. Zazen provides recourse to an even greater inventory of databases, built into our immediate sensorium. We can always return to upright sitting, facing the wall. This is where we will find the nonverbal answers we are seeking so feverishly, and somewhat futilely, in “words and letters” as Master Dogen reminds us in his seminal tract on meditation, Fukanzazengi:

You should stop pursuing words and letters

and learn to withdraw and turn the light on yourself

when you do so your body and mind will naturally fall away

and your original buddha-nature will appear

This stanza is sometimes interpreted as a slam on the nature of contemporaneous Rinzai practice predominant in the Japan of Dogen’s time. But I think we should take a broader view of the great master’s intent. He is merely cluing us in to the fact of the futility of pursuing literal, linear understanding of the Dharma in its manifestation as verbal expression. We are to turn our attention, instead, to the immediate and intimate presence of the self of body-and-mind ‑ beyond, or before, words can interfere. Here is where, and now is when, we will witness the full force of the design intent of the Dharma.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the next three segments of UnMInd we will take up the Three Jewels, Gems, or Treasures: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha - the highest values of Buddhism - from the perspective of their design intent. Buddha practice - time on the cushion dedicated to recovering our original, awakened nature ‑ is the most important dimension in the Zen, or meditation schools. Dharma study – reviewing and contemplating the teachings transmitted by Shakyamuni and the ancestors down to the present day ‑ comes second in importance and emphasis, as an adjunct to meditation.

While participation in and service to the Sangha ranks third in the tripartite hierarchy, all three legs of the stool are considered essential to leading a balanced life of Zen. It will be most appropriate to take them in reverse order, beginning with Sangha, or community, the one most fully integrated with the social dimension. The Refuge Verse, usually chanted on a daily basis, and translated variously, reads:

I take refuge in Buddha

I take refuge in Dharma

I take refuge in Sangha

I take refuge in Buddha the fully awakened One

I take refuge in Dharma the compassionate teachings

I take refuge in Sangha the harmonious community

I have completely taken refuge in Buddha

I have completely taken refuge in Dharma

I have completely taken refuge in Sangha

The act of taking refuge may be interpreted in a variety of ways; from the New Oxford American Dictionary:

• a condition of being safe or sheltered from pursuit, danger, or trouble: he was forced to take refuge in the French embassy | I sought refuge in drink. 

• something providing shelter: the family came to be seen as a refuge from a harsh world. 

• an institution providing safe accommodations for women who have suffered violence from a spouse or partner.

Its etymological origin is defined as:

late Middle English: from Old French, from Latin refugium, from Latin re- ‘back’ + fugere ‘flee’.

Over the two-and-a-half millennia of the history of Buddhism, the communities of monks and/or nuns originating in India may indeed have comported with all of the above definitions at one time or another, with the possible exception of seeking refuge in drink, which may be more characteristic of lay practice. Certain modern Zen masters have been known for their fondness for sake and beer, as was Matsuoka roshi.

The dictionary definitions share a decidedly fraught connotation of seeking “shelter from the storm,” to quote Master Dylan. But when we look at the role of the Zen community in the context of modern-day America, we can see that taking refuge in the sangha has less wary, socially positive functions as well – beginning with that of providing community, itself. True community is an increasingly rare commodity in today’s mobile society, where we as householders may or may not know our neighbors; and if we do, we may not for long, as they, or we, may move several times in one lifetime. In ancient India, China and the Far East, people may have been more likely to stay put in their birthplace, unless they were driven to flee danger or trouble. Today, we have displaced persons approaching an estimated 110 million, the largest refugee population in history.

When we analyze the design intent of western Zen communities, which manifest a mix of traditional protocols and adaptations to modernity, we have to take into account that the monastic model is no longer the predominant form, outnumbered as it is by the expanding cohort of lay householders. People of all walks of life are taking up the practice of Zen in their daily lives ‑ including participation in programs offered by Zen centers and temples in their neighborhoods, or within a reasonable commute ‑ returning to families and professional livelihoods, partaking of practice opportunities when and where they can fit them in. I call this “guerilla Zen”: we hit it and run; hit it and run; engaging more formal training with a simpatico group, while sustaining daily practice at home, at work, and at play. Everything is eventually subsumed under Zen.  

Churches and other associations share this paradoxical characteristic, caricatured by the “Sunday saints, Monday sinners” trope. Zen centers do not typically preach morality from the pulpit, but offer some degree of sanctuary in which members can retrench, to reenter the fray of daily life from a more balanced perspective and stance. This is reflected in the Sixteen Precepts of Zen, which we will not detail here, but include such social parameters as not killing, stealing or lying, not indulging in gossip, and so on.

The key characteristic by which a Zen sangha is defined is captured in the expression, “harmonious community.” We all belong to, or partake in, various communities and subgroups in our personal, family, and professional lives, but not all of them would meet the high bar of harmony that is associated with a Zen community, or that of a church. We are expected to leave our lesser angels at the doorstep, and aspire to a higher level of behavior, particularly with regard to our fellow seekers of awakened awareness.  

Compared to other socially-determined groups, such as those found in retirement homes, extended care facilities, private clubs and gated communities, one difference is that a sangha welcomes all comers, however diverse in terms of age, gender, income, background and education, or other social factors by which groups tend to discriminate. “Birds of a feather” and all. Zen groups assume that members are like-minded in their pursuit of the Dharma, and it quickly becomes apparent when newcomers join a sangha for all the wrong reasons. Attendees joining Zen retreats or undertaking residential practice are analogized to stones tumbling in a stream, rubbing all the rough edges off, until we become smooth and polished – harmonious - in our interactions with others.

Several dimensions of the Zen environment yield clues to its design intent, and where it may differ from other communities. These will vary from group to group, based on the history and traditions unique to each lineage, the legacy of its founders, and, of course, personalities. Generally, we are encouraged to overlook minor superficial differences in protocols and procedures, focusing on the underlying intent of propagating Buddha practice - meditation; and promulgating Dharma – study of the teachings; the two highest-ranking values in Zen. Let’s look at a few characteristic behavioral forms and features to be found in multiple “practice places of buddha-tathagatas everywhere,” to borrow a phrase from Master Dogen:

OBSERVING SILENCE

An emphasis on observing long periods of silence is unusual in most public gatherings, noting exceptions such as monastic assemblies devoted to vows of silence, or Quaker congregations. Restraining speech can feel awkward, even artificial; but in time it becomes a welcome source of respite and relief from the usual pressure to engage in small talk in most social and fellowship settings. In Zen, special attention is given to being mindful while others are meditating, taking heed to move quietly, as well as foregoing unnecessary speech.

MAINTAINING SIMPLICITY

Visual simplicity complements acoustical silence in the form of clutter control, straightforward layout and organization of the space and furnishings, and movement through it. The meditation hall, or zendo, is a particular focus of this principle, but it applies to all the shared public spaces of the facility. The catchphrase is “leave no traces” - which has personal meaning in terms of attachment and aversion - but is manifested in communal environs by putting things back where they belong, fluffing sitting cushions, straightening shoes on the shoe shelf, and so on. Emphasis is on reducing distraction that might intrude upon or interfere with the experience of others.

CLEANING

Part of the process of achieving simplicity is the ritualization of temple cleaning, in Japanese, soji. Matsuoka-roshi would often say, “Cleaning is cleaning the mind.” The very act of decluttering the space relieves the mind of mental clutter. He would say “I like to keep it empty around here.” It is understood that “the dust itself is immaculate,” of course, that nothing is really “dirty” in any absolute sense. But attitudes and approaches “providing a space conducive to practice” – a unique definition of generosity, or dana, offered by a senior member of HH the Dalai Lama’s inner circle, when giving a talk at ASZC some years ago – are meant to accommodate the relative level of perception, that “cleanliness is next to godliness,” as cited by St. Thomas Aquinas.

TRAINING

Cleaning the environment is a specific activity within the larger category of Zen training in general. We train ourselves to serve the community through these various activities, while at the same time serving our own needs for simplicity, silence, and so on. We train  in what has proved necessary to establish and maintain sustainable group practice in the public sphere. Aspects of how we approach this in the context of community may begin to bleed over into our personal lives at home and at work. We may find ourselves growing more attentive to our home or office environment, assuming more ownership and authorship over their functions, and their impact upon mindfulness on a daily basis. Training in Zen manifests this “halo effect,” a natural enhancement of Zen awareness.

BOWING AND CHANTING

The intent of Zen ritual may not be apparent at first blush, and so is widely subject to misinterpretation. It looks, on the surface, much like any other service one might observe, in Protestant or Catholic churches, as well as synagogues. Some are put off by the bowing and chanting, reading in such connotations as worship, public religiosity, and obsequiousness, which are all inappropriate projections. While the various formal protocols that have evolved around Zen practice have practical effects of cohering the community, their intent is largely personal.

The Buddhist bow, for example, represents, on one hand, the person we are trying to improve; and on the other, the ideal person we want to emulate, our original buddha-nature. But the palm-to-palm hand position, or mudra in Sanskrit ‑ called gassho in Japanese ‑ symbolizes that just as our two hands are part of the same body, these apparently opposing selves are also just one, or “not-two” as the Ch’an poem “Trust in Mind” reminds us. With repetition, the bow eventually becomes empty of inappropriate connotations. Like emptying a teacup, so that it can be refilled with deeper meaning.

Matsuoka-roshi would often remind us to “Chant with the ears, not with the mouth,” and that the concrete chanting, itself, is the true meaning of the chant. In other words, listen deeply to the chant, which is a Dharma teaching - not a prayer or worship - so that the act of chanting in a group becomes deeply meaningful on a personal level.

In professional design circles, these seemingly innocuous, everyday conventions of maintaining order in space, and harmonious dynamics in time, cannot be overlooked. They are, indeed, regarded as essential deliverables in retail and other commercial environments, where the adverse effects of clutter and noise can be measured in financial terms as loss of business and customer base. The influence of environmental factors may be less obvious in the personal realm. But in the world of Zen, they can provide powerful aids to finding and sustaining harmony with the Great Way, from Zen’s roots in Taoism.

For further pursuit of the symbolism and design intent of the Zen space and protocols, I refer you to Matsuoka-roshi’s early collected talks, “The Kyosaku,” where you will find a chapter on the various elements to be found in most zendos. Meanwhile, remember Master Dogen’s admonition in “Jijuyu Zammai – Self-fulfilling Samadhi”:

Without engaging in incense offering, chanting Buddha’s name, repentance or reading scripture, you should just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop off body and mind.

Sangha, community service, is important, but only to the extent that it provides the conducive environment for Buddha practice and Dharma study.   

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In this segment, as promised, we will return to the seemingly zero-sum game being played out in the political arena, under the rubric of “Election Year Zen,” episode #3.

As I pointed out in closing the second segment: This, too – “politics”  is the Dharma. While the course of action that Buddha and the Ancestors of Zen undertook, within the constraints of their cultural context, may not have had obvious political motivations, the very act of establishing and maintaining Zen practice  whether in the form of intentional communities such as a monastery, or less ambitiously, a neighborhood temple or even a hermitage  the effect of doing so upon the local society, and by extension upon the powers-that-be of the era, must have had undeniable political ramifications. Variations on this theme are recorded throughout the history of Zen.

In our life and times, as of the last UnMind posting we had just passed Super Tuesday in this year’s campaign cycle, and now have witnessed the POTUS deliver the annual State of the Union (SOTU) address. Which has, willy-nilly, evolved into a “state-of-the-campaign” address, over the last several 4-year election cycles, as just another blip on the screen of the endless, unremitting campaign, earning its own alphabet-soup acronym  S-O-T-U – abbreviation.

But before we get into the implications for Zen and its relevance to our lives, let me restate a caveat that not only bears repetition, but apparently, and unfortunately, requires it. That is, that Zen, or Buddhism, is not intrinsically political. Or, as is usually stated, it is apolitical. As I characterize it, using my favorite prefix, Zen is un-political.

Nonetheless, I am painfully aware that any message about politics, however well-intentioned, is in danger of being interpreted as political, even partisan, in nature. This is a modern catch-22 that has less to do with content than it has to do with context, owing to the highly partisan cultural and ideological divide that has infected the populace with a social and mental virus more virulent than COVID 19. I had forgotten that the virus had made its debut on my birthday, until I came across this reminder in the news feed:

How quickly we forget. I would say “how quickly they forget,” but that would lend to the “us and them” divisiveness plaguing us today. It is just that kneejerk a reaction. I didn’t read the promised “update on where things stand,” but we can assume that it claims some upsides, such as that the virus seems to have been relatively tamed, at long last. But one downside is that the political picture has, if anything, gotten worse.

Both sides of the chasm that is the partisan campaign seem to be bullish on their chances, but could not be more different in their platforms, or lack thereof. Whichever team you are pulling for, you may be reading, or dreading  or reading into  the content of this segment, to conform to your political perspective. I ask you to take a moment to evaluate whether or not that is so. It is a subtle, subliminal, and insidious phenomenon. A curse.

I sometimes wonder if my birth date is also more of a curse than a blessing. The tsunami and meltdown at Fukushima also occurred on March 11, earlier in 2011. If my birth is a kind of curse, it calls into question all of the Panglossian views of this existence as the best of all possible worlds. Maybe this is, in actuality, “Earth 2.” In the penultimate stanza of the Metta Sutta or “Loving Kindness Sutra” it says:

Standing or walking; sitting or lying down; during all one’s waking hours

let one cherish the thought that this way of living is the best in the world

Even this most benign paean to hope: “May all beings be happy”; would most likely be twisted to conform to a one-sided view of reality, if it became just another bumper-sticker in today’s cavalier campaign.

Moving right along: POTUS kicked off the SOTU with a reference to 1941, the year of my birth, citing FDR’s New Deal, which, incidentally, kicked off the alphabet-soup metaphor for the multivarious departments Roosevelt created – the FBI, the CIA, and so on and on and on. He also mentioned Harry Truman, claiming the mantle of both past presidents, while highlighting the current threat to the very institutions of government, and the emphasis on defending democracy, that they and Ronald Reagan, the other party’s past leading man, ostensibly championed.   

Which brings us to another point about nonpolitical outcomes of purportedly political decisions: the WWII bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Which, for those of us who have inherited the legacy and lineage of Zen from our Japanese predecessors, constitutes a koan of truly agonizing proportions. Just as we cannot condone the “collateral damage” inflicted upon innocent civilians and children in the case of Russia and Israel relentlessly bombing Ukraine and Gaza, respectively; we cannot justify the nuclear hell released upon the citizens of Japan by the self-same POTUS  “Give-‘em-hell-Harry”  that we admire for the accomplishments of his administration. We all share that karma. The atrocity was committed “in our name.” I was about five years old.

Mass bombing of civilians is mass murder. It cannot be rationalized as an act of politics, but represents the collapse, the total bankruptcy, of the international political system. Resorting to brute force in conflicts that our so-called political leaders fail to settle politically means they should be relieved of duty. They are incompetent. This does not ignore the necessity of military defense, in proportional response to military aggression. But it does suggest that the tactics of nonviolent diplomacy need to arise earlier in the process of negotiating conflict, whether on an international, local, or personal scale.

Buddhism’s doctrine of the myth of self seems the place to start, in positing a Buddhist take on these destructive horror shows. And why the impulse to understand the “other,” and arrive at a mutually beneficial solution, does not arise earlier in the process, if ever.

The recent repurposing of the American military forces to deliver much-needed humanitarian aid to Gaza may constitute a silver lining in the otherwise gloomy forecast. Let’s engage in a common design-thinking exercise, the “What if?” scenario. What if the overwhelming power of the military could be used as a non-partisan policing function, forcing a cease-fire before the conflict reaches a set limit of civilian casualties, say 5,000? What if humanitarian aid stood ready-to-go near the hot spots of the world, inserted into the area early on, before the match lit the tinderbox? To those who would argue that the expense would be unbearable, I simply point to the much more massive cost of the bombing itself, not to mention the daunting scale and scope of the cleanup and rebuilding of the aftermath, which, of course, profits certain interest groups immensely. We have a saying in design circles, that there is never enough time and money to do it right the first time, but there is always time and money to do it over. What if we could flip that formula, on a global basis. The alternative seems to be “Earth 2.” Some seem resigned to its ultimate triumph over reason and compassion, called “Armageddon”; others seem fully devoted to making sure that the apocalypse comes to pass, fulfilling their favorite prophecy. Proving them, finally, “right.”

It would be the ultimate irony, would it not, if the end of civilization, and the extinction of the human species, comes about not of necessity  but from a failure of will, fueled by misinformation? That a small percentage of the population with their fingers on the buttons not only do nothing to prevent the final catastrophe, but actually help to bring it about, based on their religious beliefs? Which then turn out to be wrong! No rapture, no kingdom of God on earth ruled by a savior. Just the rubble of what was once a great potentiality, laid waste by ignorance. Not a dystopian future, but no future at all. The greatest category mistake and unintended consequence in history, accidentally bringing human history to an end. What if this planet of ours turns out to be Earth 2, after all?

This is your, and my, karmic koan-du-jour. Answer quickly, or receive thirty blows of my stick!

In the next series of segments, we will return to more prosaic, everyday explorations of Zen and design thinking, while keeping an eye on the ongoing campaign. In May, we will take another look at the developments to date, with a somewhat jaundiced eye to their relationship to the compassionate teachings. Meanwhile, study your ideology thoroughly in practice.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Monday, March 11, was my birthday, as I mentioned in the last segment of UnMind. Wednesday, March 27th, happens to be my late brother’s birthday. So in his honor, let us continue exploring the theme of Time — its seeming passage and constant presence. He was a professional jazz pianist and teacher of music, and so was fully immersed in time. Once upon a time, while discussing time signatures in music, such as four-four time, three-four time — the familiar waltz tempo — and so on, he leaned toward me, a mischievous smile on his face, saying that, “You know, there is also ‘one-one’ time” – counting off with his forefinger: “One-one-one-one.” He and I had many such dialogs at the intersection of music theory and Zen thinking. He has since passed on, sitting in with that great jazz combo in the sky. I bet he draws a crowd.

(Some of the material in what follows originally appeared as my Dharma Byte of the month, titled “Swords into Plowshares,” in 2020, when the pandemic was in full swing.)

In that message, and at that time, I made the point that privileging the survival of the oldest is not Nature’s way; it is usually the survival of the fittest. It is not natural to put younger members of the species at unreasonable risk, in order to protect the older members. This goes against  the natural order, as we witness in survival strategies of wildlife, as well as in social structures of the earliest human tribes. The survival of the species dictates age-related triage, in favor of those most likely to survive, to live longer, and to reproduce. Exceptions always arise to prove the rule; Nature is not simple.

Yet humans reverse this natural logic, in wartime as in the example of the military draft, as well as in recruiting methods for police officers and firefighters. People in their late teens and early twenties often enter into dangerous occupations, in service to the larger community. Those who study such things tell us that neurological networks, including the brain, are not yet fully formed at that age, recognition and fear of mortality typically arising about the mid-twenties, when the brain finishes wiring, as we say. We were doing it again in the face of the pandemic, sending younger first responders into the fray, while protecting elderly and senior members by isolating and quarantining them.

I have reported on my own encounter with COVID 19, which dragged out for the better part of a year, beginning with a three-month up-and-down sickbed recuperation from congestion and other flu-like symptoms, followed by slow recovery of lost strength, flexibility, balance, energy, and the kind of “brain fog” associated with “long covid,” the lingering effects on the nervous system. As part of that recovery, I developed an aggressive approach to the sitting posture and its relationship to the breathing process of Zen meditation, as well as to walking meditation, with its focus on physical balance.

At about the time I began returning to morning meditation sessions, the new era of private billionaire space exploration was heating up, with more frequent launches than ever seen in the history of NASA. Perhaps this was a subliminal prompt to my beginning to count my breaths down to zero, in contrast to the usual counting up from one to four or more, and avoid counting beyond ten, as are common recommendations in Zen.

With an initial, deep inhalation, I would hold the breath for a count of eight or so, while doing a full-body crunch, tensing the core muscle groups, as well as my newly stiffened legs, and weakened arms and shoulders. With the exhalation, I would intone “nine,” then “eight” for the next cycle, and so on, down to “one,” and finally, “zero.” After repeating this pattern for a half-dozen times or so, I would settle more quickly and deeply into the period, while the counting and muscular effort naturally subsided.

A curious thing began to happen each time I would reach zero in the count. By then, my breath would have slowed to five or so cycles per minute, and I could feel my heartbeat. So I found myself counting my heartbeat, instead of my breath. Or rather, noticing how many heartbeats accompanied each cycle of breath. The heartbeat is clearly the metronome of our instrument, the body. And number, or counting, is clearly fundamental to our worldview, intrinsic to all design thinking and measurement, and basic to Zen’s nondualism: “leaping aside from the one and the many,” as Master Dogen reminds us.

As my breath slowed to a lower, slower tempo, my pulse also slowed, synchronizing with the breath. This resulted in a profound degree of stillness in both posture and breath, as well as fixed gaze, affecting my overall sphere of attention, reminding me of Matsuoka-roshi’s comment that the “real zazen” is manifested when the posture, breath and attention all come together in a “unified way.” And that it feels as if you are “pushing the crown of your head against the ceiling” — “mountain-still” stability. I began to feel that unification viscerally, encompassing the apparent “outside” and “inside” dimensions of awareness. Familiar, but more intense than ever before. I call this “returning to zero.”

There are many phrases in the lexicon of Zen that seem to be pointing to this same kind of experiential phenomenon, such as Master Dogen’s “backward step”; the ancient phrase “Shi-kan” meaning something like “stopping and seeing”; the “shamatha-vippasana” pairing of insight meditation; et cetera. The process of letting go — primarily of our own preconceptions, interpretations, and opinions of direct, sensory experience; and by extension, of our concepts and constructions of the world, trying to explain this reality to ourselves — seems inherent in all major systems of cultivating realization. That the method is so quintessentially physical, is what is striking about the Zen approach to just sitting still enough, straight enough, for long enough.

The idea, or concept, of “zero” has philosophical and psychological implications as well. The common trope of the “zero-sum game” is a case in point. The definition online:

A zero-sum game is one in which no wealth is created or destroyed. So, in a two-player zero-sum game, whatever one player wins, the other loses. Therefore, the players share no common interests. There are two general types of zero-sum games: those with perfect information and those without.

This amounts to another version of the meme: that if there are winners, there must be losers, so there can be no actual win-win. This ignorant assumption unfortunately informs much of what passes for political discourse, and socially conservative ideology.

I refer you to the lectures of R. Buckminster Fuller for a fuller exposition of the limitations of the view that there is not enough to go around, and the survival of the fittest means that we must, above all, ensure that we get ours, to hell with the losers. Such innovations as the guaranteed minimum income are beginning to crack the facade of this fundamental error.

The last line, concerning the dual nature of the zero-sum game being dependent upon “perfect information,” may provide a clue as to how the notion of winning and losing connects — or doesn’t — to the personal practice-experience of Zen. Beyond a direct “return to zero” — the personal dimension of awareness on the cushion — there is a returning to zero on the social level, as well as within the natural and universal spheres. In his rephrase of a Ch’an poem, Zazenshin, meaning something like “lancet” or “needle” of zazen, Master Dogen wraps up the penultimate stanza with:

The intimacy without defilement

            is dropping off without relying on anything.


The verification beyond distinction between Absolute and Relative

            is making effort without aiming at it. 

This experience of “intimacy without defilement” is the zero sum point of zazen: nothing to be gained and nothing lost; nothing excluded and nothing extraneous, nothing to share with others – it is too intimate, too close in time and space. The fact that at this point we cannot rely on anything, is another aspect of Zen’s “zero” sum. We sit “without relying on anything” as Master Dogen reminds us, including all the tricks and trinkets we have painstakingly assembled in our toolkit. Our toolkit is exhausted, the tools we usually rely on, relatively or absolutely useless. “Absolute and Relative” constitute one of the last resorts of dualistic thinking; the fundamental bifurcation of “truth” in Buddhism is usually stated as absolute truth versus relative truth. So this “verification” must be of a different order altogether, one that is immeasurable. So far beyond any measurement, is this realization — though there is continuing effort, it is no longer aiming at anything.

This means that there is ultimately nothing of significance to gain or lose in relationships in the social sphere, nor do we have to distort our relationship to biology, our connection to the resources of Natural ecology. In terms of resolving the Great Matter of life and death, we can embrace the inevitability of aging, sickness and death as the central koan — one that comes bundled with birth — the illogical riddle of existence itself. We no longer have to rely on life, itself. Here and now, we arrive at the final zero-sum game.

Whether or not we believe in an eternal soul, and its resurrection, as do modern Christians; or in reincarnation, as did the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Hindus; or rebirth as taught by Buddha, as a corrective to reincarnation; we finally come to face our mortality close-up and personal. It is natural, and universal, whatever its interpretation by the social milieu in which we find ourselves. According to an old Zen metaphor, the only “mate” who will accompany us to the grave, is our deeds. Whatever wealth, honor, power, or powers of reasoning we may have accumulated in managing and manipulating the vagaries of fate and vicissitudes of fortune encountered in life, they serve us little in the face of death.

Try as we might to think our way to enlightenment, or to reason ourselves into insight, we find ourselves failing again and again. Finally, we must surrender to the chaos of not knowing, and abandon our reliance on reason itself — spawn of philosophy and that other kind of Enlightenment, the triumph of reasoning over belief. Instead, we find verification of our Zen practice in “making effort without aiming at it.”

Needless to say, this is a very uncomfortable place to find oneself, at a pass that is not really negotiable, in any ordinary sense. Paraphrasing Seikan Hasegawa, a Rinzai master, from The Cave of Poison Grass, he reminds us that putting off confrontation with this particular koan of aging, until we find ourselves on the death-bed, is futile: “like eating soup with a fork.” We need to confront this koan when we are young and vigorous — “Stamp life and death on your forehead, never letting it out of your mind” — another Zen pearl of wisdom long lost to attribution. Life takes its meaning in the context of death. If you find that too morbid, just imagine what life would be like if we did not die: Its meaning would be entirely different, and not entirely positive.

When the grim reaper arrives, we may want to embrace her relentless, unforgiving and unsympathetic scythe, as being no different from the sword of Manjusri, cutting through our final delusion. Preferable to die on the cushion, of course.  

As Kosho Uchiyama reminds us, our whole world is born, and dies, with us. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” In contemplating our inevitable demise as a loss of something, we have to remember that it amounts to returning to where we came from, a kind of null hypothesis that the effect we are dreading is not measurable, or sums to zero:

In scientific research, the null hypothesis is the claim that the effect being studied does not exist. Note that the term "effect" here is not meant to imply a causative relationship.

That last caveat calls to mind the famous Zen koan concerning Baizhang, or Hyakujo, and the fox. The point goes to the question of whether or not an enlightened person would be subject to, or free from, the law of causality. The ancient master responds: “Free from,” and is condemned to be reborn as a fox for five hundred (fox) lifetimes. Baizhang kindly corrects his confusion with something like: “One with causality” or “We do notignore causality,” which liberates the old man.

If we fear death — or, conversely, seek it out; fearing life, instead — we have made an assumption that we know what life is, but do not know what death is; or, conversely, that we prefer death over life; or vice-versa. Either side of this formula ignores the fact that the overall equation inevitably sums to zero.

I came across a pamphlet titled “The 11th Hour,” in my brother’s hospice care clinic, wherein its Christian, female author clarified: Birth is the death of whatever precedes it; death is the birth of whatever follows” — refreshingly without bothering to define the “whatever.”

In the next segment — speaking of zero-sum games — we will return to pick up the monthly thread of “Election Year Zen,” now that we have surpassed Super Tuesday, in this year’s endless campaign cycle. This, too, is the Dharma.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

BRINGING ORDER OUT OF CHAOS

It might be said that the function of the discriminating mind (S. citta), in the most general sense, is to render what is perceived as chaos into what may be perceived as order. Of course, this is not an original idea, and has an associated idea that chaos, as we perceive it, may be thought of as a higher level of order, one that is not accessible to our perception. This idea resonates in both the world of Zen and that of art and design thinking.

One would have to speak of a relative degree of order versus a notion of absolute order. However chaotic reality may appear, it is following physical laws that suggest an underlying order that is simply not a respecter of persons, or of the sensibilities of humans. We must come into compliance with reality, rather than expect reality to conform to our expectations or preferences. This, I think, is the fundamental basis of the concept of the “Way” in Taoism, and an underpinning of Zen as it developed in China. However, the Way in Buddhism, as I understand it, is not a hypothesis or theory of objectified reality outside the observer, but exists only in complementary balance with the person.

Our observation of perceived order also exhibits relative degrees, or a spectrum from one extreme to another. For example, our house may be a mess inside, but look orderly on the outside, unless we get evicted and our possessions are dumped on the street. If you peer into parked cars on any city street, they will tell you a story about the person who drives them, or lives in them. Some definitely have that lived-in look, while others are pristine, even sterile-seeming, as are some homes. If you have ever seen the French movie, “Mon Oncle,” or “my uncle.” you may remember its satirical take on the super-white, stainless steel interior, and the housewife’s gloved approach to maintaining its spotless state. My best friend in high school lived in a home where the floors of the living rooms were covered with shag carpet, which was newly popular in the 1950s, but theirs was brilliant white. We had to remove our shoes to enter the house, which was peculiar to me at the time, but later became second nature after being exposed to the Japanese culture, beginning with the Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago, in the 1960s. Sensei had us stand at the door with a basket of clean socks to hand to the barefoot hippies coming in off of Halsted Street. In his eyes, they must have appeared as complete barbarians.

If you are in someone’s home as a guest, you might take a peek in the medicine cabinet. There you will see an indication of the sense of order of your host’s mind. (I have never done this, of course; it is very rude.) What is on the shelves, and where, and whether the medicines are outdated, may paint a portrait of how obsessive-compulsive — or happy-go-lucky — your friends may be. Bear in mind that for a couple living together, these issues become instantly, and infinitely, more complicated. Who does what and when, and who is responsible for the resulting mess, becomes entangled in the relationship. Master Dogen, who transplanted what is now called Soto Zen to 13th century Japan from his sojourn in China, used the word katto to identify entanglements, using the analogy of twining vines, like wisteria. This applies not just to the tyranny of possessions and environments, but to the subtle entanglements of relationships themselves.

Other examples of refined order, from the human perspective, include such storage-and-retrieval systems as fishing tackle totes and sewing boxes, where the necessity for “a place for everything and everything in its place” determines the efficiency and effectiveness of the endeavor of actually fishing or sewing. I inherited an antique sewing box, with its many spools of colored threads and implements of sewing wonderfully arranged in stunning order, formerly in the control of a friend’s grandmother. Somehow my son and daughter, under 5 years old at the time, got into it and turned order into chaos, probably in about 5 minutes, when the array of organization had likely developed over five years or more of grandma’s life. There was no way I could put it back in order. 

Workshops are another example, where attention to the organization and design of the environment can begin to overwhelm the prospect of actually getting anything done. The project of organizing the process can distract our attention from doing the project itself.

In the course of organizing my various studio and shop environments over time, I have developed what I call the “Island of Sanity” approach. It took me 50 years or so to learn that table tops are not for storage. I strive to keep the tables clear of any clutter, including tools, even during the process of working. “Clear the decks” is the trope. The “work,” the piece under construction, or a painting, is the only item that is allowed to occupy the table top. I have found that laying tools on the table means that when I need to move the work, the tools often get in the way. So I keep a side table as home for the tools.

On the tool table, I keep the various tools in play in a neat array, rather than mindlessly piling them on top of each other. In the hurly-burly of executing a project, the tool table often becomes disorderly. I occasionally reorganize it quickly, so that the tools are side-by-side in a scannable row, not overlapping. This way I can quickly recognize and seize the particular tool I need when I need it. Others have refined these approaches.

Allowing a relative degree of perceived chaos in the work environment seems to be a necessary evil. Otherwise, we may be driven to distraction by trying to improve the process, and never finishing the project. What is sometimes called “completion anxiety” may set in. As long as we are working on a project, but have not brought it to conclusion, it can remain forever perfect in our mind’s eye. When it is finished, it is just what it is, warts and all: imperfect. Everything is somewhat imperfect; or at best, relatively perfect. 

In my case, maintaining islands of sanity creates the proper balance for getting things done, with minimal stress on the mind and body. What the particular balance amounts to, and what works best for the individual, seems to be a personal trait. Some people can work efficiently in a virtual pile of clutter; others are highly dependent on a visually uncluttered workspace. Einstein’s office — which is preserved intact even today, as a memorial, just as he left it — is said to be an exceptional example of “meaningful clutter.” Whether yours is meaningful, or not, is up to you to determine.

Clutter control is a recognized discipline, a known issue in interior design of environments, whether working or living spaces, public or private. The “rising tide of clutter” can overwhelm any space. Just tune into one of the current spate of television shows on hoarding, to see some of the worst-case scenarios.

Contrast becomes important in being able to see the shape of a tool, to state another obvious point. Vertical walls for storing tools often consist of white pegboard for this reason. I have learned that I lose my eyeglasses less often if I remember not to place them on a dark surface, into which the dark frames blend and disappear. The inverse is true when retrieving a light-colored object. Dark backgrounds are called for.

Along with many of my contemporaries, In the 1960s I experimented with so-called psychedelic or psychotropic drugs. One memorable experience found me sitting in my basement shop, trying in vain to sort various items of hardware into appropriate category designations for storage and retrieval. All items share many characteristics in common with others, and it actually was not clear which were the priorities. For example, many fasteners (of which there are many kinds) may be made of metal, and so “go together,” but are designed to fasten many different materials, such as wood, as opposed to metal. In the case of fasteners, we end up with so many leftover screws, nuts and bolts, et cetera, from our projects, that it becomes a more-and-more time-consuming process just to keep what you may never use in some kind of order. I have seen everything from homemade systems utilizing salvaged glass jars, lids attached to the underside of shelves, allowing the jar to be unscrewed with one hand; to endless aisles suffering from over-choice, and designed systems for storing virtually endless categories, sizes and types of fasteners, in hardware and big-box stores. The world is really too much with us, in these categories.

An example from retail, that might not be obvious to the customer, but is well known to the insiders, entails the arrays of shoes at your local shoe store. The stock is usually stored in back, where the various sizes of a given style can be efficiently stacked and retrieved in labeled shoe boxes. The storefront, by contrast, displays all the shoes in their best light, putting our best foot forward, literally. Usually the smaller sizes are displayed, not only because they take less room, but because they are usually more aesthetically pleasing than bigger sizes of the same style and color, vestiges of ancient foot-binding in the East. A little-known fact is that the array has the appearance of more styles and colors than are actually in stock, because the merchandisers display them by style, by color and other attributes: the same shoe will appear in two or more displays throughout the store.

As a boy, I used to wonder why my father had so many pairs of shoes in his closet, when I had only one or two. Now I have more shoes than he did, accumulated over time, because the size of my feet stopped changing, and I found different needs, or lack of need, for different types and styles of footwear. Imelda Marcus is the poster girl for this category of disorder, with her 3,000 pairs of shoes.

Produce in a grocery store is another example. People generally like to pick over produce, selecting the best ones, leaving the fruits or vegetables that are less appealing in looks, apparent freshness, et cetera. For this reason, pre-packaged produce is a harder sell. This is why we see monstrous stacks of open produce in brightly-lighted bins, in most modern food supermarkets. Which, by the way, are destabilized when 10% are removed.  

To see, a bit more clearly, how fundamental the process of sorting is to the basic function of perceived order — including storing and retrieving things — try to imagine a contrarian approach, such as displaying books by color, say, or clothing grouped by fabric, rather than size or style.

I have witnessed the tendency to over-organize — or organize by inappropriate groupings — in my own efforts to achieve order, in striving to make sense of my environment. One example is that I tend to group and store like things together, such as putting any and all writing pens in the same place. Or I may do the same with my collection of eyeglasses, which has accumulated over time through misplacing, replacing, and rediscovering spectacles. Problem is, I need a writing pen at different places at different times, yet I do not want to have endless writing pens scattered all over the place. I know people who collect fine writing pens, and wonder if it amounts to a compulsion, or a stubborn resistance to the decline of handwriting, in favor of the word processor — with which, incidentally, I am writing this essay, from handwritten notes scrabbled on various sheets of notebook paper, noted when I was away from my desktop.

We tend to blame linear thinking as the main culprit behind chaos, and all of this need for — and inability to find, or sustain — order. When we begin to consider that everything we regard as belonging to one category actually belongs to many others — perhaps an infinity of categories, if we parse it finely enough — a kind of insanity or cognitive dissonance, a lack of mental order —  begins to come into play.

This is, in Zen, or Taoism, the point at which we begin to “confront the mystery,” from the Tao te Ching:

Caught by desire, we see only the manifestations;

Free from desire, we confront the Mystery.

“The one and the many” are indeed like the yen and yang of our discriminating mind. That phenomena and noumenon exist in complementary embrace, or the endless dance of becoming, is not immediately evident, when we are just trying to get through the day. This is why, and how, it becomes important to take a break, and to sit on it for a while. Hopefully, when we stop striving, the immanent order of emptiness underlying the alienating appearance of form will become manifest. But as Master Dogen mentions in Genjokoan, don’t look for it to appear in your perception:

 Do not suppose that what you realize becomes your knowledge,

            or is grasped by your consciousness;

            although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent.

The inconceivable may appear as chaos; the underlying order may not be apparent. Chaos may be embraced as a higher form of order, or an elevated degree of complexity, in which any discernible pattern is elusive; while perceived patterns of order may be similarly interpreted as artificially lower levels of chaos, or higher degrees of superficial  simplicity. Upon closer examination, perceived simplicity devolves into the complexity of chaos, e.g. on the subatomic or quantum level; whereas chaotic complexity gives way to serene simplicity. “All things are like this,” to borrow another vintage Dogen-ism; the vacillation is built-in, from duality to nonduality and back. Enjoy the ride.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Monday, March 11, 2024 is my 83rd birthday, and coincidentally the deadline for this segment of UnMind, in order to drop on Wednesday the 13th. I did an exercise in visualizing my personal timeline this last year, and will share it with you in this installment. You will have to visit the website to see the illustrations (link), but for now, as we say in professional design circles — when a design board presentation got lost in checked baggage — “Picture this, guys!” Been there, done that.

I began by laying out my life in decades, starting in 1940 when I was conceived around July, born 9 months later in 1941, and — incidentally, not coincidentally — the year that Matsuoka-roshi arrived in America.

Picture a spreadsheet 10 columns across, headed 1940,1950,1960,etc. up to 2030; by 6 rows down, with categories: Geographical, Societal, Marital/Familial, Educational, Formal Zen, and Professional. You get the idea. Then fill in the blanks with locations like Centralia, IL (my home town), Chicago (where I did my advanced schooling), Atlanta, GA (my adopted home town), Europe and Japan, traveling on design and Zen business — my lifetime “ecological sweepout,” as Bucky Fuller calls it. Big events like WWII, Korea and Vietnam; the end of the Cold War; Covid, etc.; and lesser ones such as “Born 3/11/41,” 1st & 2nd Marriages, Father & Mother dying; BS & MS degrees, etc., populate the cells. Plus Zen turning points such as meeting Matsuoka-roshi, Lay Ordination, ASZC & STO Incorporation, publish date of my first major book, “The Original Frontier”; and finally, career benchmarks such as teaching at U of I & the School of the Art Institute, various corporate ventures, and my current art dealer, Kai Lin Art Gallery, complete the exercise to date. I recommend you try something similar, to get an overview of your life.  

By the way, that expression, “conceived,” is interesting from a professional design perspective. We have what we call “concept design,” the initial stage of ideation, wherein few to none of the details of a design solution to a problem have been worked out. The spit-balling, brainstorming phase. Which seems to apply pretty aptly to that embryo in the womb — an inchoate mass of tissue that will, some nine months hence, come popping out into the world — if not “fully-formed,” as Buddha, in his miraculous birth, was said to have been. Not only that, but he immediately took seven steps in each of the cardinal directions; and, pointing one forefinger to the heavens above, the other to the earth below, declared: “Above the heavens and below the heavens, I alone am the most honored one!” If, indeed, this story is true, then, indeed, he would have had to have been. Or at least one of the most highly-honored ones.

But of course, we take this tale with a huge grain of salt, perhaps even a saltlick block, like we used to put out in the pasture for our horses, on the farm where I grew up. My only claim to fame regarding an unusual birth came to light when my mother later confessed that she had tried to abort me by jumping off the back porch, which was what passed for birth control in those days, today referred to as “reproductive health.” Mom and dad already had “a boy for you and a girl for me,” in the persons of my older brother and sister — one darkly handsome, the other blond and beautiful, respectively — and the budget from the newspaper route they ran was already strained. I got my revenge by being born with an enormous head, which, because I was upside-down in the womb, I attribute to all that jumping.

For some reason, my life seems to have morphed through the various “times-of-life” cycles — used to sort demographics in social research — in near synchronicity with the decades, as measured by an admittedly arbitrary calendar, called the Gregorian, which, according to the wizards of Wikipedia:

The Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It went into effect in October 1582 following the papal bull Inter gravissimas issued by Pope Gregory XIII, which introduced it as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian calendar. The principal change was to space leap years differently so as to make the average calendar year 365.2425 days long, more closely approximating the 365.2422-day 'tropical' or 'solar' year that is determined by the Earth's revolution around the Sun.

Glad we got that cleared up. Now, we can see clearly the absolute degree of arbitrariness inherent in our concept of measured time. We can’t even measure the time of day, the calendar year, or the planet’s revolution around the sun, without resorting to infinitely endless decimal places. So much better than that antiquated Julian thing, though. And, “close enough for jazz,” to most intents and purposes.

As you can see by looking at the first chart, my geographical sweepout was rather limited to my home state of Illinois in my 20s, other than a couple of junkets to California, until I moved to Atlanta in my 30s, then finally went abroad on business in my 40s, and to the Far East in my 50s, on behalf of Zen. My family did not have the kind of resources that would have financed a “grand tour” of Europe in my formative years. This charting of your life on a single sheet of paper turns out to be an exercise in humility, when you realize how little you have done, and how brief your lifespan really is. We will return to this subject in the context of the “lifespan chapter” of the Lotus Sutra.

In the second spreadsheet, I extend the timescale to 80-year spans — extending back to 1460, and forward through 1540, 1620, 1700, etc., and finally my own era of 1940 through 2020 — shrinking my personal timeline down to two columns out of ten, roughly 20% of the larger span of five centuries or so. Visualizing only one row, encompassing the societal level, a distinct pattern emerges: major events, especially in the USA, seem to happen in 80-year cycles, going back to the Revolutionary War and Civil War and including World War II, which was just heating up when I came on the scene. Sure enough, when I Googled it, I found that this pattern of 80-year cycles is a known phenomenon, sometimes referred to as the “Strauss-Howe” theory, derived from critical events in the history of America, as well as the rest of the globe.

The Strauss-Howe generation theory describes a recurrent cycle of same-aged groups with specific behavior patterns that change every 20 years. According to this theory, an 80-year cycle is crucial, when every four generations is associated to a crisis that impacts the ongoing social order and creates a new one.

A startling personal finding popped out like a sore thumb: at 80 years old, I was 1/3 the age of my native country, the good old USA. A person 80 years old at my birth would have been born around 1860, the Civil War; one 80 years old at that time would have been born around 1780, the time of the Revolution. The reference to Armageddon in the final column, finally coming to pass within 80 years from now, is only partially, and hopefully, tongue-in-cheek.

Expanding the timescale even further, the third spreadsheet encompasses twenty-five centuries since the advent of Buddha in 500 BCE, to the current 2000’s, again shrinking my personal tenure to a vanishingly small portion, less than ten percent of the total, if I live to be 100. Which is unlikely. Although, as Matsuoka-roshi would often say, “Zen keeps the men younger, and the women more beautiful.” I can’t really explain my relatively good health and wellbeing in any other way.

To close this segment, let us consider some of the statements attributed to Buddha at the end of his life, in the Lifespan Chapter of the Lotus Sutra, ostensibly uttered as he was about to enter Pari Nirvana:

To the deluded and unenlightened I say that I have entered nirvana

            although in fact I am really here.

For the sake of these sentient beings I teach that

            the lifespan of the Buddha is immeasurable.

The light of my wisdom illuminates immeasurably

            and my lifespan is of innumerable kalpas.

            This has been achieved through long practice.

You wise ones do not give in to doubt! Banish all doubt forever!

            The Buddha’s words are true never false.

Here, we find one of the most controversial of all claims in Buddhism, which begs credulity — similar to the resurrection of Jesus — along with that of his virgin birth. Even the idea of Pari Nirvana smacks of “woo-woo,” given our skeptical scientific setting:

In Buddhism, parinirvana is commonly used to refer to nirvana-after-death, which occurs upon the death of someone who has attained nirvana during their lifetime. It implies a release from Saṃsāra, karma and rebirth as well as the dissolution of the skandhas.

Bows to our fellow travelers at Wikipedia, once again. But while we can readily embrace the dissolution of the skandhas — or aggregated form, sensation, perception, intention and consciousness, upon the onset of death, it seems mere speculation that anyone might find total release from the ocean of Samsara, the cycles of karmic consequence and rebirth, that Buddhism teaches as theories of the laws governing sentient existence.

But Buddha seems to be pointing at something else, a kind of permanent existence that is not limited to the form of our present, impermanent body-mind. Like the timeworn analogy of the ocean and the waves, the eternal lifespan of Buddha implies that whatever is here has always been here, and will always be here, if in different form. A wave returns to the ocean, but does not, cannot, drown; being of one and the same substance.

I will leave it to you, as usual, to “thoroughly examine this in practice,” as Master Dogen kindly advises. This is not a cop-out. If reality could be explained in words, it would have become commonplace knowledge long before 2500 years ago. The original language of our original mind is still in place. All we have to do is develop “the eyes to hear and the ears to see” it. The method for developing this transcendent, trans-perceptual wisdom is stunningly simple: just sit still enough — and straight enough — for long enough. And listen up — to the “sermon of no words.”

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

As promised, at the beginning of each month in 2024, we return to the topic of “Election Year Zen,” with my “DharmaByte” column (DB) for the Silent Thunder Order monthly newsletter, followed by my first subsequent “UnMind” podcast (UM) of the month. To review the underlying rationale for this approach to a topic most practitioners would prefer to avoid, please refer to last month’s DB and UM if you have not already done so.

In an earlier DB from June of 2023, I had broached this subject gingerly, and I touch upon it in my second major book, “The Razorblade of Zen.” In the newsletter column, I make the point that partisan politics in general is not a topic we would recommend bringing up in the context of the meditation hall — in Japanese called the “zendo” — a sensitive point which had come up in dialog with one of our affiliated Zen centers (quoting myself again):

In a recent meeting with one of our affiliate centers, the focus was on “The Platform Sutra of Huineng,” in which he admonishes all to not find fault with others. One of the members who helps organize these events sent me some questions she wanted me to address, including the dilemma of how we are supposed to not find fault with people who are waging war on others, and committing atrocities such as bombing cities, civilians, and children. She was concerned that raising these issues might be too personal, in the context of a Zen community, where the underlying premise might be to provide some shelter and sanctuary from the insanity of the world. But I assured her that, no, these very events are apt examples of the very ignorance, and resultant unnecessary suffering, that are pointed to in the foundational teachings of Buddha. And that she is right to raise such questions in the context of Zen practice in modern life.

It is my understanding that in the monasteries, and perhaps the smaller temples in cities and villages of the countries of origin of Zen Buddhism, the custom is to have little or no speaking in the zendo itself. As I learned in 1989, when visiting Eiheiji, the training monastery established by Master Dogen in the 13th century, ceremonial services are typically conducted in an entirely separate building, as are formal talks and other forms of dharma study.

This tradition has carried over into the American Zen community, where we are encouraged to leave the zendo quietly after the meditation and gather in another chamber before engaging in dialog. So the idea that we preserve the sanctity of the zendo, and the sanity of its attendees, has some legs. There are good reasons for the specific designs of the protocols we have inherited from Zen’s storied past.

However, in most smaller temples and training centers, having multiple rooms, let alone separate buildings, in which to conduct various activities is a luxury that many cannot afford. This is the reason both the main altar (J. butsudan) and the smaller zendo altar dedicated to Manjusri are often in the same room, separated by space, or located on different walls of the meditation hall. So we compromise, and hold competing sessions at different times. The meditation hall becomes the dharma hall, then reverts back, when sitting in zazen. Silent, upright seated meditation is the hallmark of Zen, taking precedence over all other activities, fostered by instruction periods for newcomers.

However, Zen is not unconnected from reality outside the temple, and the zendo does function as a kind of social sanctuary, as does zazen itself, in the personal sphere. We can manage to accommodate both personal practice and social service functions in the same space, by scheduling them at different times. This does not mean, however, that everyone has to participate, just as everyone need not attend all newcomer instruction sessions. Which is why instructions are not given with every session in the zendo.

Members who do not want to discuss buddhadharma on any other than the personal plane are welcome to avoid attending dharma dialogs that have a social slant. But if we prohibit such discussions, we are sidestepping our civic responsibility, which, if you study the Buddhist canon, from Buddha on down to the present day, you will see that the ancient sages and their modern counterparts have not shied away from the subject.     

When it comes to indiscriminate bombing of civilians and children, we are no longer in the realm of politics. If we are silent, we become complicit. Buddha, I believe, would have spoken out against this betrayal of compassion and wisdom. As did Matsuoka Roshi, concerning the corrupt regime in Vietnam, and other atrocities of his time. We can look to the teachings and meditation practice of Zen Buddhism to find a degree of solace and sanctuary from these insults to humanity, but we cannot run, and we cannot hide from them, ultimately. But we do not have to join the partisan divide, either.

To provide some historical context for this discussion, we refer to the foundational documents of the founding fathers of this nation, the oldest surviving democratic republic. In the prior installment on this matter, we quoted the famous first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Let us continue with the second section:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Aye, there’s the rub: if “all men” — which phrase we now define to include all women and all children, of all races, ethnic backgrounds, and countries of origin — are indeed created equal, and endowed with “unalienable rights,” then there is no rationale, no excuse, for waging war in which innocents are slaughtered as “collateral damage.”

— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

If the very purpose of government is to secure such rights as to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then the institutions of government — including first and foremost the military — must be prohibited from depriving citizens of any country of these rights, with or without the concept of a “Creator.” They go on to define the remedy:

— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

So here is the ostensible rationale for the recent attempts to overthrow the present government, though the events of January sixth clearly appear to have partisan roots. At the time of this writing, of course, this ultimate right was claimed in the context of Great Britain’s “crazy” King George, and his autocratic grip on the colonies. The history of protests of the original tea party and privileged Tories — loyalists and royalists, or “King’s men” — illustrates that the times were probably as divisive, or even more so, than our present partisan divide. Anticipating that this passage might be construed to lend support to purely partisan motives, the framers optimistically hang the hope of future jurisprudence on the dictates of prudence itself:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Leaving aside for now the determination as to which causes should be eschewed as “light and transient,” this suggests that this call to arms is based on the degree of oppression the hoi polloi are willing to bear. This returns to the theme of the last segments of UnMind, with their emphasis on the intersection of design thinking and Zen, where in both arenas, one of the central questions bearing on happiness and suffering is, How much is enough? If the majority of people are fat and happy, and “kitchen table” issues — the price of eggs, bread and butter — are relatively bearable, little attention will be devoted to overthrowing the government, no matter how corrupt. “Let them eat cake” works, if there is fairly widespread access to cake.

The division of the citizens into haves and have-nots, with those at the top of the game, the “one-percenters,” raking in wealth that is unimaginable, and inaccessible, to the rest, may be much more exaggerated today, as well as more obvious and available to scrutiny, owing to the ubiquitous availability of 24/7 real-time news media.

A recent newspaper column revealed the staggering increases in incomes of the country’s top three or four wealthiest individuals, compared to their more meager incomes of only a few years ago, alongside the minimum wage, which has remained static in the same time period, This disparity of incomes has national and international implications as an impetus to immigration, to make matters more complicated. You may argue that these captains of industry deserve the income they earn, but that stretches the concept of earning to the breaking point. You cannot “earn” this level of income in any rational sense of the word. Corporate income comes from “owning,” not earning.

We are not going to solve these problems in this analysis, but we can at least compare and contrast the current cultural norms and memes that attempt to justify them, with the teachings of Buddhism, such as encouraging us to engage compassion in dealing with our fellow travelers in the dusty realm of Samsara, the everyday world of patience. So we have to practice patience with a situation that seems to have no justification whatever, or very little from this perspective.

While the case can be made that not all people are created equal, it can be argued that to the degree reasonable, the playing field should be leveled. A child born with a silver spoon in their mouth, whether currently or 2500 years ago, is no more deserving than a child born into a family that doesn’t even own a spoon. To argue that those parents should not have children who cannot afford to have children ignores the reproductive drive of the species, which pays little regard to the material circumstances of its sperm donors and receivers.

Once a child is born, it has the same potential for realizing its buddha nature as any other child, regardless of the causes and conditions into which it is born. And we cannot misuse the Buddhist take on karma and karmic consequences to dismiss these disparities, nor the social injustices that often accompany them, out of hand. The teachings of Buddhism were never intended to be held up to others as a criticism or justification for inaction, but to be reflected back upon our own follies, foibles and failings. This is the “mirror of Zen,” which reflects the good, bad, and the ugly without discrimination. We come to see ourselves in this mirror, along with all others, in our extended dharma family. Buddha was said to have come to see everyone as his “children,” and not in a condescending way.

To close this segment, I will lean on Master Dogen’s admonition to “thoroughly examine this in practice.” Let us return to our cushions, but not turn our back on those who have not even been exposed to this excellent method. Our mission is clear. We need to wake up on every possible level. Compassion and wisdom — like charity — begin at home.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Following on the previous UnMind series of three segments on aging, sickness and death, the Three Marks of Buddhism’s worldview, we will expand our scope to the broader world of international conflict, characteristic of our modern world, where Buddhism’s three conditions of existence are also manifested, if in a more universal form. Traditional definitions of these basic aspects of life are universal in scope: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and no-self (Skt. anicca,  dukkha, anatta). We can see clearly that in today’s world, these givens of existence are not warmly embraced on the social level in America, let alone on national or global levels, which surely follows from their avoidance on the personal level.

Beginning with Buddhism’s “compassionate teaching” – the Dharma – we find that along with the three marks of aging, sickness and death, Buddha promulgated the “Three Poisons,” usually rendered as “greed, anger or hatred, and delusion or folly.” What a witch’s brew is conjured, when we mix the six ingredients together.

In the context of aging, greed becomes the longing for longevity, the overreliance on meds to avoid the ravages of illness, and extravagant, catastrophic efforts at prolonging life at all costs. Anger and hatred arise when we are denied the ability to forestall aging, when we are overcome by a pandemic, and when we blame widespread death and destruction on others. Delusion and folly ensue when we act on our mistaken beliefs, attacking others for the natural consequences of our collective and individual actions. The unexpected consequences threaten us all, whether in our dotage or full-flowering youth, with the Four Horsemen – plagues, famine, and the predations of war, and not necessarily in that order. Just who is to blame for this situation and how can we hold them accountable?

In the worldview of Zen, everything, including charity, begins at home. To quote Master Pogo Possum, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” The first embrace of reality is to “study the self.” The second is to “forget the self,” as Master Dogen reminds us in his famous teaching, Genjokoan–Actualizing the Fundamental Point.Actualizing the fundamental point of existence requires that we embrace our own aging, sickness and death – the close-up-and-personal reality of impermanence, imperfection and insubstantiality, including our precious self – while recognizing that greed, anger and delusion are fueling the fires of discontent, leading to blaming others for our personal predicament. Sometimes, others are to blame for making things worse, of course, just as we are to blame for making their world more crowded. Stop the world and let me get off. Would it were so simple.

The blame game can range from blaming our parents for our birth, on one extreme, to blaming those others most distantly related to us by blood. I read somewhere that the furthest removed any human being can be from any other human, biologically speaking, is something like 26th cousin, if memory serves. One wonders, with the growth in population, whether that tenuous kinship is getting closer, or further apart, as time goes by, with 8 billion people and counting.

I also read of a laboratory experiment, some years back, where they used the classic maze of rats to find out what happens when you simply keep adding rats to the maze, without letting any escape. At one point of increasing density, the rats begin attacking each other. They “blame” the others for their own discomfort, apparently. The analogy to human population should not be lost on anyone. The anxiety and outright hostility associated with immigration on a global basis is too obvious a parallel to ignore.

Or we can aim all of our blame at the political system, or the candidate du jour. Now that the “debate of the century” has landed with a thud, the rats are having a hard time deciding which of the two leaders of the rat pack is most at fault.

Much of the anger and hysteria we witness on ideological and political fronts of the public discourse seems motivated by underlying fears, exacerbated by perceived worsening conditions, including density of population. The identified “foreigners” – bringing unintelligible languages, peculiar cultural customs, and bizarre belief systems – induce anxiety, stereotyping and suspicion amongst native populations, triggering the threat of the privileged being “replaced” by them in the great scheme of things. This probably arises from a tribal, protective social instinct, linked to the survival of “our kind.” Hyped to the max by political opportunists, into the bargain.

But on a more personal level, this anxiety, amplified by mob hysteria, surely finds its origin in the triple threat of aging, sickness and death, that is inborn with each individual. Birth is the leading cause of death, after all, like it or not.

This perceived threat, however irrational, is tied to what biologists call the survival instinct, or imperative. Reality is not a respecter of persons. But biology is designed to privilege survival of the species over all comers, adapting to ever-changing circumstances. Natural and artificial changes in context often outpace and outmaneuver biology, engendering threats to survival, to cycles of “extinction panic,” or to actual extinction of the species, potentially including humanity. Cultural evolution – our ability to pass on technological advances to the next generation, and their ability to further improve on their cultural inheritance – is ensconced in the social sphere. But it likewise runs into trouble when it is not agile enough to keep up with the rate of change of conditions to which it is adapting, in the natural and universal spheres. Such as climate change. Aye, there’s the rub.

“Survival of the fittest” is the shorthand catchphrase for dumbing down Darwin’s elegant and complex theory on the “Origin of Species.” To find a cogent example of society’s collective resistance to this notion that we privilege the fit, we need look no further than the recruiting, drafting and conscription of young men and women – the “fittest” – into the modern military – the main mechanism oriented to societal survival – across the globe. Civilian leaders, and those at higher command levels, manage to keep a safe distance from the front lines, so as to return to fight another day, one assumes. But the survival of the oldest is not Nature’s way. It is not natural to put younger members of the species at risk to protect older members. Witness the wolf pack.

This biological imperative dictates an age-related triage, protecting those most likely to survive, to survive longer, and to reproduce. Yet humans do the opposite in wartime, and did it again in the face of the pandemic, by sending younger first responders into the fray, while protecting elderly and senior leaders through isolation, quarantine and access to medical care. Notwithstanding how miserable a failure that effort turned out to be, the point is still well-taken. Of course, from a practical perspective, the young provide the necessary numbers, and the vitality, needed on the frontlines. Even if senior members of society were willing to take point in crisis conditions, the question would be whether or not they are able to.

Setting aside such considerations of the neurotic societal implications of turning younger generations into cannon and virus fodder, what will it take to finally bring about world peace? Can we beat our swords into plowshares, turn intercontinental ballistic missiles into spaceships, cyberwar into cyberfun?

The current national debate is styled as a contest between democratic governance “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” striving toward a “more perfect union” of the republic; versus power elites exerting autocratic control over a hopelessly divided populace. The appeal of the latter is understandable for the “haves,” those who already enjoy a relative elite status of economic and social privilege. They stand to come out on top, liberated from the messy business of compromise with those on the bottom end of income equality. Likewise, the uneasiness of the “have-nots” is easy to understand. They see themselves as already victimized by the unlevel playing field, touted as equal opportunity for all.

This, it would seem, is the real wall that is being built, not on the border, but right down the middle of the country. Its building blocks consist of the institutions installed by the founding fathers, rearranged to reassert the original privilege of white, land-owning males. But is all this – the daily fare being served up by the media and opposing forces – really the root of the problem?

Whether or not we believe in an eternal soul, or reincarnation, as did the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Hindus, or resurrection, as do modern Christians, we finally come to face our mortality, in person. In Zen, the only mate who will accompany us to the grave is our deeds. Whatever wealth, honor, or powers of reasoning we have accumulated in managing and manipulating the vagaries of behavior and vicissitudes of fortunes encountered in life, they serve us little in the face of death. The same may be said of family, though better to die surrounded by loved ones than alone, or surrounded by hostiles, I suppose.

On the cushion we sit “without relying on anything” as Master Dogen reminds us in his version of “Needle for Zazen (Zazenshin),” including all the tricks, trash and trinkets we have assembled in our toolkit. Try as we might to think our way to enlightenment, or to reason ourselves into insight, we find ourselves failing again and again. Finally we must surrender to the chaos of not knowing, and abandon reliance on reason itself, spawn of philosophy and the other kind of Enlightenment. We find verification of our practice in “making effort without aiming at it.”

Needless to say, this is a very uncomfortable place to find ourselves, at a pass that is not really negotiable, in any ordinary sense. All the stages of grief prove futile in the face of the relentless process and progress of biology. We need to confront reality when we are young and vigorous, as in “Stamp life and death on your forehead, and never let it out of your mind,” paraphrasing a truth long lost to attribution. Life takes its meaning in the context of death. If you find that too morbid, just imagine what life would be like if we did not die. Its meaning would be entirely different, and not entirely positive.

When the grim reaper arrives, we may want to embrace her / his relentless, unsympathetic and unforgiving scythe, as being not at all different from the sword of Manjusri, hopefully cutting through our final delusions. Just as hopefully, the passing pageantry of life, particularly the concurrent social-political dimension, will have little or nothing to do with the circumstances surrounding the last breath we take. Preferable to die on the cushion, of course.  

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In our last segment of UnMind, on the meaning of “less is more” — a central axiom of design thinking coined by the famous architect, Mies van der Rohe — I introduced the notion that this adage may be usefully applied to Zen, as well. The simplicity of lifestyle and paucity of possessions surrounding the history of Zen, in China and Japan in particular, speaks to the general question regarding happiness and satisfaction in life: How much is enough? In this segment we will consider how “more” can often be “less.”

When we reach a certain level of stability in the normal stages of life in the “first world” countries of modern times, we may find that we have an overabundance of personal possessions: a complete household, and maybe a summer home as well, with the requisite home furnishings; maybe one or two vehicles, a boat, maybe even a private plane. At a certain point, unless we can manage the upkeep and maintenance of all our many acquisitions, our possessions begin owning us. That is, an increasingly large percentage of our time is devoted to taking care of the many things that we do not actually use very often, and probably don’t really need, in any realistic sense. Then comes the de-cluttering and downsizing, just to get back to a normal state of affairs — where we can spend our time on those aspects of life that we find most important and rewarding, such as family, friends — and, in Zen, personal insight into existence itself.

In examining our approach to Zen meditation, in the context of “less is more,” we see clearly that excess accumulation of material goods is not of much use, and can readily form yet another barrier to simplification of all the demands on our time and attention.

When it comes to meditation, we consciously choose to pay attention to the basics of existence, including the body and its posture, the breath and its pattern, and the mind and its machinations. In doing so, we witness the natural functions of the monkey mind as setting goals, ruminating over the past and worrying about the future, and so on. In order to simplify our task of waking up to reality as it is, we can recognize when we are setting goals, for example, and choose to stop setting goals, at least in terms of our meditation.

So I launched into the discussion of subtracting such elements from our practice, as we witness them arising, resulting in the concept of “goalless” meditation, which in itself may be defined as a “goal.” Or “timeless” meditation, where we set aside the burden of timing our sitting period, and allow ourselves to reenter real time, which has nothing to do with measurement. Eventually our meditation can become “effortless” — where we have been doing this for so long that, like driving a car, it really doesn’t require any conscious effort; and the physical effort has become second nature, so no big deal.

SENSELESS MEDITATION

Extending this idea, the various dimensions we observe in zazen, such as the six senses, yield the possibility of “sightless” meditation; “soundless” meditation; “odorless” and “tasteless” meditation; and even “sensationless” meditation, which would be akin to physical Samadhi, I suppose. It would also entail “weightlessness,” when our BMI and gravity come into perfect balance.

MINDLESS MEDITATION

And finally, “emotionless,” as well as “thoughtless,” or “mindless,” meditation — which latter would conventionally be interpreted as a pejorative. But in Zen, the “don’t-know mind” is valued most highly. Emotional Samadhi: less anxiety, more serenity; mental Samadhi: less confusion, more clarity. Eventually, “social Samadhi”: less friction, more harmony in relationships with others, as well as being comfortable in your own skin. 

FORMLESS MEDITATION

From the perspective of posture, breath, and attention, which and when they all come together in a unified way, as Matsuoka Roshi would often say: “This is the real zazen”; we find ourselves practicing “posture paramita”: aiming at the perfect posture without ever imagining we have achieved it, another of Sensei’s Zen “secrets.” Through a process of profound sensory adaptation, we arrive at “formless meditation,” not only in terms of physical posture, or form, the first of the five aggregates, but also “mental formations,” the mysterious fourth skandha, meaning underlying motives, intentions, desires, and so forth, the psychological level of motivation. All gone away.

CONSCIOUS-LESS MEDITATION

The natural evolution of our approach to meditation would then naturally and logically lead to a kind of “conscious-less” meditation, an expression so countercultural that it requires a hyphen. The fifth aggregate comprehends the other four, in that we are, or become, conscious of form, sensation, perception, and mental formations, on deeper and deeper levels. Until we apprehend the “flip-side” of each, as the Heart Sutra indicates: “no form, no sensation, no perception, no mental formations”; “until we come to no consciousness also,” as the original English translation we used at Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago rendered the line. We are conscious of the other four — until we are not; and then we are conscious of consciousness itself — until we are not. This steady progression through — and adaptation to — the aggregates, outlined in the Surangama Sutra, is attributed to Buddha himself. So I am not just making this up as I go along.  

BREATHLESS MEDITATION

That our meditation becomes “breathless” at some point may not be obvious — not in the sense of “breathless anticipation” — but in that we are not doing the breathing to begin with; the body is. So when we relinquish the idea of “control”: of the posture, the breath, and the direction of our attention; the natural posture, the naturalbreath, and the natural, or original, state of mind can come into play. We return to our original mind and body, which as Master Dogen reminds us, will unmistakably “drop off.” In good time.

OBJECTLESS MEDITATION

When our attention — and intention — come together in a unified or holistic way, then it may be said that our meditation has become “objectless.” Both in the sense of the senses and their objects merging in nonduality, and in the sense that we no longer can articulate any specific intention, underlying our practice. It has become “shikantaza,” the Japanese expression for the inexpressible unified field theory of conscious awareness. But we should not become enthralled with this as a concept, which threatens to morph into an expectation, rather than an aspiration. If we understand that “form and reflection behold[ing] each other” is the necessary and natural inflection point that meditation inexorably leads to — or returns to, to be more precise — we cannot go far astray.

CONCEPTLESS MEDITATION

This suggests yet another “less is more” dimension of meditation: that it can be utterly devoid of concepts, associations, or connotations, of any kind. This we might define as “pure” meditation, in the Zen sense of “purity” as nonduality, rather than conventional connotations of morality. No concept, however broad and deep its scope, can capture the breadth and depth of the effect, meaning, and implications of zazen. This is why the  content and intent of Zen is sometimes referred to as “The Great Matter,” capitalized.

HEARTBEAT MEDITATION

On a less transcendent and more practical level, I would like to share with you some of my more recent discoveries in zazen fostered by my contracting COVID 19 in December of 2022, followed by a roughly three-month recovery period, amounting to an enforced “ango,” or traditional practice period, of ninety days. During this time, I lost a lot of strength, flexibility, balance, and coordination; and experienced the “mental fog” associated with the worst aftereffects of the pandemic, though I am not inflicted with “long covid” but only the exacerbated effects of aging in combination with the disease.

In taking the posture during this time, crossing my legs was increasingly difficult, and the resultant stiffness in my knees threatened to strain a tendon. So I took to sitting on the edge of the raised bench, with my feet on the floor. Getting up from the floor when manning the timekeeper (Doan) position became an agonizing exercise in finding the leverage to stand up. So I moved to chair-sitting. This adaptation to aging is not unusual, by the way — several veteran adepts have found that, by their mid-sixties, they could no longer sit in lotus posture.

In order to recover my ability to sit with stability while cross-legged, I began taking a more aggressive approach to the posture and breath, as well as to walking meditation, to compensate for the loss of my youthful vigor. My long-term engagement with kinhin, I am convinced, explains my relative sense of balance, compared to others my age.

In implementing this more active approach to the posture and breath, I discovered that I would begin feeling my heartbeat after holding my inbreath for a count of eight or ten, realizing that the tempo of the counting corresponded to the heartbeat. It is as if your heart is the metronome, counting off the time signature of your instrument, the body. By doing a full-body “crunch” while holding my breath, my spine would pop and pull into its natural s-curve, arching the small of the back forward and down, and pulling back and up on the chin, exaggerating the “cobra-rising” rigor of the upright seated posture.

Exhaling, I began counting the heartbeat instead of the breath, noticing how the two are synchronized. Gradually, as the breath slows down, so does the heart, from 2 beats per in-breath and out-breath to four, then longer sequences of pulsation as the outbreath, in particular, slows down to a soothing rhythm. Repeating this cycle of squeezing and letting go, the relaxation response begins to set in, embracing the squeeze-and-release cycle of the heart itself, allowing more relaxation time between pulses.

I could go on into more detail about how this rhythmic process smooths itself out until, as Matsuoka Roshi would say, the breath seems to come and go through the whole body, like a frog sitting on a lily pad, breathing by osmosis through the pores of the skin.

HEALING MEDITATION

I am convinced that this process of observing the integration of posture and breath has therapeutic, or healing, properties; which have immediate benefits of calming the nervous system, and long-term effects promoting longevity. The main benefit of longevity being that it affords a greater chance to wake up fully, in the Zen sense, during this brief lifetime.

You might consider expanding this discussion in your own words — such constructions as “compassionless” meditation — to consider whether the concept of compassion that you may be harboring actually conforms to the true meaning of the word, which is to “suffer with.” If you come up with any confounding notions along these lines, please feel free to share them with me. It may prompt a beneficial exchange as to the “limitless” meditation that is zazen.

In the next segment, we will return to consideration of “Election Year Zen” — with all the real-world ethics and civics implications that this focus implies. Please join in the dialog.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the last segment of UnMind, the second installment discussing the sameness and differences I have noted in teaching Zen or design as a profession, I wrapped up the essay by mentioning the concept of “control,” as it might apply to either or both:

In meditation circles, we often hear phrases such as “controlling the breath” or “emptying your mind of thoughts.” These represent attitudes 180-degrees from that in Zen meditation, which is not one of exerting control, but rather relinquishing any real or imagined level of control.

Using that as a springboard for this segment, let’s examine our approach to Zen meditation, in the context of the well-known adage from minimalist design, “Less is more.” According to Google:

Minimalism is exemplified by the idea of “less is more” as first coined by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

The idea that less may be more, in applying the method of zazen, is implicit in many dimensions of the character of Zen training, from Buddha’s Middle Way of moderation to the “chop wood, carry water” practicality of the Chinese history, the seven items a monk was allowed to own, and the sparse serenity of the zendo interiors of Japan, with their starkly minimalist sand and rock gardens.

The Institute of Design, during my years there in undergraduate and graduate studies, was housed in the basement of Crown Hall, while the Mies school of architecture was on the upper floor. His contribution to minimalist architecture lay in the combination of glass and steel to construct high-efficiency buildings, of which Crown Hall was an early archetype.

Another aphorism from design thinking that I mentioned:

...there are many design ideas that are simple in concept, but difficult in execution. Zen may be the poster boy for this truism. Zazen is irreducibly simple in design, but Zen can be maddeningly difficult in daily execution.

This is where I would like to begin this segment. Thinking about meditation, particularly Zen’s zazen — as I understand this “excellent method,” as Master Dogen repeatedly referred to it — it occurred to me that during zazen, as a process of “unlearning,” or “subtracting” the preconceptions we harbor as to our conventional take on reality, we might usefully question a variety of such attitudes and concepts, as to whether we are unintentionally, perhaps even unconsciously, striving to attain something as a presumed goal of our practice. Only if we recognize that we are doing so, can we then consciously relinquish that particular problematic attitude or opinion, and see what it is like to sit without it getting in our way. A number of these came up for me, which we can consider one at a time, perhaps extending into the next segment. They are expressed herein with the suffix of “-less,” which implies “the absence of.” Let’s begin with the very idea of goals in general, embracing the approach of “letting go” of our predilections.

GOALLESS MEDITATION

Of course, we all sit in meditation with some kind of goal, whether simply to calm the mind under stress; to get back to normal; or more deeply, to “wake up” to reality, which might be said to be the principle goal of Buddhism. But Master Dogen cautions us, in “Principles of Seated Meditation—Fukanzazengi,” to avoid taking goal-setting too far:

...think neither good nor evil, right or wrong

thus stopping the functions of your mind

give up even the idea of becoming a Buddha

In other words, resist setting up what seems a more lofty goal, in place of the pedestrian objectives we might associate with meditation. Which begs the question, can we do away with all goals and objectives, at least while we are sitting? We might say that it is not that Zen meditation has no goal, but it is just that the actual goal is too deep and too broad to be expressed in words, especially a priori. We meditate to discover the goal.

TIMELESS MEDITATION

Most instructions for meditation include imposing time constraints on it, for example by setting a timer, using an app with a built-in alarm, burning a stick of incense, or following the schedule of timed sessions on retreat, or during daily practice at a Zen center. When we experience the latter, sitting with somebody else tracking the time, we feel somewhat liberated from the necessity of thinking about the time, or paying attention to the clock; someone else is doing that for us. When we take a turn as time-keeper (“doan” in Soto Zen), we experience the discipline of being responsible for others’ time on the cushion. Both are highly recommended.

But someone once said that in zazen, “the barriers of time and space fall away.” When I see someone restively glancing at their watch in the zendo, I will often ask to borrow it. Then, they are unable to indulge their fidgeting obsession with time, at least while sitting.

This goes to the larger question of all the measurables associated with our meditation — such as how long we sit, how often, how regularly, et cetera — which are not as important as the immeasurable aspects: that we simply never give up. We keep returning to zazen, in good times or bad, for whatever time we have available for it.

I recommend that occasionally, perhaps the next time you sit in meditation, that you forego your tendency to time the period. Sit without any stopping time in mind. Then you may finally reenter real time, which is not measured; indeed, it is not even measurable. You may find that time is all you really have; that in fact, you have all the time there is.

This reality of real time versus measured time is captured in the sardonic  expression — “The man who has one watch always knows what time it is; the man who has two never knows for sure” — attributed, as many such wisecracks are, to Chinese origin. 

EFFORTLESS MEDITATION

In his paraphrase of a brief Ch’an poem about meditation, titled “Zazenshin,” meaning something like an “acupuncture needle” or “lancet” for zazen — something exceedingly sharp or pointed — Master Dogen points to the true meaning of “right effort” toward the end of the poem:

Intimacy without defilement

is dropping off without relying on anything

Verification beyond absolute and relative

is making effort without aiming at it

“Making effort” includes assuming the posture, which is not always easy, especially when we overdo it; and breathing, which can be labored, especially when we catch a cold, or during flu season.

I have heard that the posture should feel more like a stretching sensation than physical effort, and that the breath should be more like a sigh than belabored breathing. My root teacher, Matsuoka Roshi, said “the breath should be like a gate swinging in the breeze, first this way, and then the other way,” a rather pleasant, languid, relaxed image. And, he would say, “Zazen is the comfortable way.”

This should give us pause, in our pursuit of overweening effort, characterized as “macho Zen,” which we get from our impression of Rinzai’s more driven practice of externally-imposed discipline. I suspect that this meme is more a social dimension of the culture, than having anything to do with the reality of Zen practice — other than inculcating a sense of urgency: that we have no time to waste, in getting after this most important and central “great matter.”

In the next segment of UnMind we will continue with this exploration of the “less” side of the practice. As a semantic curio, the English meaning of the prefix “un” — which in my dharma name means “cloud” — connotes the “opposite” of something, or something very different, as in the “un-cola” campaign promoting the soft drink Seven Up, which I know dates me. It is similar in effect to the suffix “-less,” which connotes the “absence” of something.

If you have any suggestions along these lines for me to entertain in the next segment, let me know. My list is quite long, but there is always room for one more consideration to eliminate, from distracting us from our meditation. 

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

If you are paying an undue degree of attention to the details of my UnMind podcasts, you may have noted that the last segment was titled “Teaching Zen & Teaching Design,” while this one is “Teaching Design & Teaching Zen.” A trivial difference without a distinction, you might say. The emphasis on design thinking may have been a bit confusing, and Zen will be the major focus of this one. But either is here used as a foil for the other, in the spirit of “Harmony of Sameness and Difference,” the second great Ch’an Poem in Soto Zen liturgy, by Master Sekito Kisen:

Hearing the words understand the meaning

            do not set up standards of your own

Not understanding the Way before your eyes

            how will you know the path you walk?

In design circles we say that communication is not the message sent, but the message received. Thus, in parsing my words, and any potential relevance to you and your practice, I ask that you look past my clumsy use of language, which is itself dualistic in nature, to the nonduality of reality as experienced in your consciousness, especially in your meditation.

In the last segment I pointed out one obvious contrast between Zen thinking and design thinking: We do not think that we can think our way to enlightenment, in Zen. Meditation goes beyond thinking. Or perhaps more precisely, Zen’s shikantaza, the immediate, long-term effect of zazen, defined as “objectless meditation,” resides in that space that exists before thinking. Thought takes time, and so is always looking back on what has already transpired.

When it comes to practicing the method of zazen, as well as adapting Zen’s worldview, the common premise going in is that thinking, as such, is not going to prove very useful, though it is our most useful tool in apprehending, and recognizing, what Master Dogen referred to as “non-thinking”: neither thinking nor not thinking; the mental middle way.

Both design and Zen’s meditation process involve a trans-sensory level of learning, which in Zen may be more aptly defined as “unlearning.”     

So it is not exactly accurate to say that we can “teach” Zen, though we do our best to share our experience, including some “do’s and don’ts,” in an interactive dialog. As Matsuoka Roshi would say, “We teach each other Buddhism.” I often learn more in a given exchange, say in dokusan, more than may the identified student. Shohaku Okumura Roshi once commented, during a dharma talk that he gave at the Atlanta Zen center, that he was only “the teacher” because we were there as “the students.” When at home, or in a different context, he was certainly no longer a teacher, as such.

We say that Zen cannot be taught, but that it can be learned. Learning Zen, versus learning anything else — especially something as tangible as product design — also differs in that the proof of the pudding, in Zen, is in a taste so intimate and personal that it cannot be shared with anyone. Whereas if I can sit in the chair you designed and built, I can tell for myself that you either know what you are doing, or not.

For example, my wife and I once had the distinct pleasure of an overnight stay in Wisconsin, in a small cabin that had been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, called the Seth Peterson Cottage. It was a lovely, compact building, in which neither Seth Peterson nor the great architect had ever set foot, both having died before it was complete. The relevance to our focus here is that while the building, and its lovely arboreal siting, were works of genius, the breakfast nook was very uncomfortable, consisting of flat banquettes with no cushioning. But they matched the walls, also clad with plywood. FLW was known for this emphasis on appearance over comfort, also evident in an exhibit of his higher-end home furnishings mounted at the Art Institute of Chicago Museum during my tenure there. 

Zen and Design both entail apprentice modes of training. That is, developing a grasp of Zen is rather like the process of learning to build a Steinway grand piano. The master or journeyman and their apprentice exchange few words, instead the apprentice simply observing and imitating what his mentor does. In near total silence, the essential functions and processes are communicated through actions, not words. And eventually — lo and behold — the piano is ready to play.

This apprentice-journeyman-master triad is analogous to the initiate-disciple-priest model frequently found in Zen circles. The former wording may be more appropriate to our times than the latter — laden as it is with quasi-religious overtones, which do not quite fit the reality of being a Zen adept in America. Although we have great respect, bordering on reverence, for our teachers in Zen, we do not let it go to our heads when we find ourselves on the other side of the relationship. Or we should not, in any case. We who find ourselves in the awkward position of being expected to lead others in this most personal of all problem-solving arenas tend to think of ourselves as more like coaches. The student is like an athlete, who is endeavoring to reach the elite level of the sport. If they are not willing to do the work, no amount of coaching is going to help. If they are, it does not take much coaching to move the dial. This also applies to design.

After all, I cannot know for sure what another person needs to know, in terms of Zen. I can only know what it is that I do not know; and perhaps, how to go deeper; as my root teacher would say. He would often remark that it’s not what you say or do — in leading a Zen service, for example — it’s how you do it. That is, it is natural, and okay, to mess up: you may miss the gong at the time designated; blow a line in the chant, et cetera. But as long as you do not let that get in your way, or disrupt the focus of the others present, no harm, no foul. It is more in the attitude with which you approach things — a balance of wholehearted sincerity and lighthearted joy — that will convey the essence of Zen, than it is in the precision or accuracy of your performance. Zen requires an agile sense of humor, and a goodly dollop of humility.

Another dimension of the training process shared by Zen and design professionals is that of “training the trainers.” Although in both cases we are not really propagating a priesthood, but promoting a practice, the notion that our successors will carry on the tradition of training others is implicit in most professions, as well as in Zen. Zen should be approached professionally, rather than mystically, the latter being an example of unhelpful connotations often associated with Zen in the West. 

One of my professors at the Institute of Design one day proclaimed that the main thing you pick up from your professors at university consists of their attitudes toward the work. I would add that you also pick up learning habits and a work ethic: learning how to learn, as the standard trope goes. The same goes for Zen. Attitudes need adjustment.

But the focus of Zen training is not exclusively in the realm of ideas, but rather in the realm of direct experience. Zen is not about reality, or what we can do to manipulate it, but a direct pointing at reality. This is how we approach it on the cushion, without relying on ideas, words and concepts.

In Zen as well as design, the issue of control comes into play. In planning, designing and building something, anything — from a chair to the Brooklyn bridge or Holland tunnel — we have to control the materials and processes that will achieve the end we are attempting to achieve. Otherwise, the chair will be uncomfortable, like Frank Lloyd Wright’s plywood benches, or we may build in a future disaster, like some of the dire engineering collapses we have witnessed from time to time. But trying to control everything has its limits.

In meditation circles, we often hear phrases such as “controlling the breath” or “emptying your mind of thoughts.” These represent attitudes 180-degrees from that in Zen meditation, which is not one of exerting control, but rather relinquishing any real or imagined level of control. We follow the body in assuming the posture, and we follow the breath, rather than attempting to control it. What’s sauce for the body is sauce for the mind. We let thoughts go, until they die down to dull roar, on their own. If you do not agree with this non-control, next time you are meditating, and Mother Nature calls, just tell her to buzz off: You are meditating just now. See how that works out for you.

Similarly, in design processes, you have to relinquish your tendency to force materials and processes into a mold that is unnatural for them to perform the way you want them to. The concrete has to be adequately reinforced for the tunnel or building to withstand the stresses of gravity, or hurricane-force winds. The fasteners cannot weaken the wood, or the chair will collapse.

I could go on, but will close with one more aphorism from design thinking: there are many design ideas that are simple in concept, but difficult in execution. Zen may be the poster boy for this truism. Zazen is irreducibly simple in design, but Zen can be maddeningly difficult in daily execution. It is not the fault of Zen, but rather of our stubborn monkey mind. But don’t give up. Only you can do this. You are the only one who can design your Zen life. Only you can redesign it, as reality intervenes.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

As I mentioned in one of the prior segments of UnMind: In zazen, as well as in Zen writ large, we embrace a directive from the first great Ch’an poem by Master Kanchi Sosan:

To move in the One Way

Do not reject even the world of senses and ideas

Indeed embracing them fully is identical with true enlightenment

This is the most direct testament I have come across to refute the charge that Zen is somehow anti-intellectual. Those of us who take up the Zen way do, however, recognize the limitations of the discriminating mind in dealing with nonduality, but we do not dismiss intellectualization outright. Our ability to analyze, dissect, and reconstruct information is one of the most powerful tools we have in confronting the various confounding issues we face in life. But it cannot solve the mystery of existence alone. Something else – call it intuition? — has to come into play on a level beyond thought. As Matsuoka Roshi would often say, “Zen goes deeper.”

In this segment, I will attempt to address a subject suggested by one of our members, considering the distinctions I have found in my experience teaching Zen over the years, versus my professional background in design, formally beginning with my BS and MS training at the Institute of Design, Illinois Tech in Chicago — acronym ID+IIT if you want to look it up —  followed by my tenure teaching at the U of I, Chicago Circle Campus, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Another complementary influence was my training in end-user research, primarily for new product development, with a Chicago-based firm. It was one of my main sources of income while in university, and the firm with which I moved to Atlanta in 1970. The integration of end-user research with each stage of creative development, from raw concept through refined concept, form, features, and styling, and so on, became the subject of my Master’s thesis, and is now the gold standard in the industry, the most obvious example being the end-user-participation approach to debugging initial releases of software apps.

As a starting point, one notable difference in design and Zen training may be that those who teach design on a professional level, and those who pursue it for advanced degrees, tend to refer to the overall method and approach as “design thinking,” which stresses analytical training to apply design as a generalist endeavor, rather than as a specialty. The premise is that the method employed in defining and solving any given problem of the applied design profession is thought to be basically applicable to any other problem-solving activity, in general terms. In research circles, the term “methodology” is often used to refer to the method followed in conducting the study; it actually means the study of method itself. Which is one area of intense focus in design itself, one of its more well-known proponents being Victor Papanek.

For example, the method employed in designing and building a chair is basically the same as that utilized in writing a book, both of which I have personally done. Of course, since the materials required, and the functions of the end product differ; the details of the process differ accordingly. But the overarching steps in the process are similar in nature, as in all problem-solving initiatives. The steps usually taken are roughly parallel to those for solving quadratic equations, acronym PEMDAS. Indulge my stretching the analogy a bit, but the recommended sequence for doing the mathematical operations is to solve the Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and finally the Subtraction, and in that order; otherwise the answer is not likely to be correct.

Metaphorically, solving the “parentheses” and “exponents” of the equation first, I take as roughly equivalent to defining the purpose and function of the end product: Who is the audience for this book, again? What is the point in designing yet another chair? What is the implicit thrust, or “root” of the problem, in other words?

Once the project’s underlying charge and challenge is clarified, then the ideation can begin; brainstorming and mind-mapping: consideration of all the possible materials available, such as hardwoods and furniture fasteners, in the case of the chair. Or the arc of the narrative of the book: What is in the first chapter; how do we end the last chapter; how many pages or words? Both of which I think we can regard as a kind of “multiplication” process. It may expand into future phases, with issues around getting the book, or the chair, published or manufactured, respectively.          

Once everything that may prove to be pertinent to the design and production of the new thing has been teased out through free association — and documented so as not to be lost — the exercise shifts to dividing the formless mosaic of the mind-map into relatively distinct groupings, much like Buddhism’s five aggregates of sentient awareness. This I take as a form of “division.” Dividing the holistic concept into digestible bites in order to further develop the finer details. What options are there for furniture feet, finishes, and fabrics, if  the chair is to be upholstered? What is the most logical sequence of chapters for the table of contents; how detailed do we need to make the footnotes or endnotes?

Prioritizing the categories to take them one at a time, we then examine each set individually as to their completeness, and flesh them out, including elements we may not have thought of in the first go-round. This is the role of “addition,” kicking in once we have neatly divided the whole into discrete parts, each of which benefits from individual embellishment. For the chair, this may include line extensions such as choices in fabric, variable sizes and features such as adjustability of an ergonomic model. For the book, it may include illustrations, graphic inserts and, these days, links to online content.

Finally, we get to the “subtraction,” the last in the sequence. For the book, this would comprise the familiar editing process, in the form of major block edits, detailed line edits, and excising text that may not earn the space it occupies in terms of contribution to the story line. For a chair, as a one-off and especially for mass production, it might entail identifying and eliminating unnecessary secondary operations in manufacturing, which prove unnecessary to the quality of the finished product.

In all creative processes, whether in a group or individual endeavor, these steps flow from first considering, defining, and redefining, the initial problem; then mapping out all the various aspects, dimensions, and components of the problem; sorting elements into relatively discrete groupings; then adding any overlooked components to flesh out the various categories; and, finally, editing: prioritizing, setting aside and/or eliminating any and all areas and items of concern that may be safely postponed for later consideration, focusing on those that are most central to a solution, and demanding immediate attention, before moving on to more peripheral issues. This cycle is not a one-and-done, of course; the evolution of the book or chair often requires recycling through the earlier steps repeatedly, until the final design has moved from concept to execution.

Such methods, like everything else these days, have now become ubiquitous online, where we find such apps as “Google docs” listed in 3,400,000,000 search results for “online group methods.”

To conclude this segment, let me add that I feel that my training in the Bauhaus method of design thinking at ID+IIT combined with training in research methodology uniquely positioned me to take on the propagation of Zen as an identified problem, and to focus on the definition of that problem, as it evolved over nearly 50 years to date. The research model enabled me to apply group process to the administrative side, studying the requirements of establishing a 501c3 not-for-profit corporation in compliance with the rules and regs of the IRS, and to manage the many dysfunctional aspects of board of directors’ governance. That the ASZC has been in virtually continuous operation is, I think, testament to the validity of this approach.

In the next segment, we will segue into consideration of these same approaches to the teaching of the unteachable, Zen. Stay tuned and keep practicing.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

After taking a holiday hiatus from my DharmaByte column and UnMind podcast, in collaboration with my publisher and producer, we have determined a new direction for 2024, or a new way of extending our past direction. As this is the quadrennial election year in the American national political cycle, we feel it is time, and timely, to address the relationship of Zen practice in particular, and the teachings of Zen Buddhism in general, to that of governing, and more broadly, our civic duty as citizens of the United States.

The differing definitions of “politic” versus “political” give us a clue as to the difference between engaging in the fray from the perspective of the Middle Way, and that of the usual partisan divide. Politic, according to the dictionary, means: “(of an action) seeming sensible and judicious under the circumstances” while “political” is rendered:“mainly derogatory — relating to, affecting, or acting according to the interests of status or authority within an organization rather than matters of principle.” We can see that what Buddha did 2500 years ago was the former, establishing the original Order as an alternative to the prevalent caste system, rather than going head-to-head with it.

While many adherents, propagators and proponents of Zen in America, including some members of our community, or sangha, have expressed a reluctance, even a repulsion, toward the political arena, we take the position that “You have to say something,” to quote the title from a book by Katagiri Roshi, as I did in my “War & Karma” segment from November of 2023:

 I fear that if we in Zen do not try to address these terrible global realities in the context of Buddhism, it may be taken as an indication, or an admission on our part, that Zen, along with its teachings and practice, [may] have finally faded into irrelevance, in the face of such intractable 21st century problems.

Setting aside for now the quirkiness of quoting one’s own prior writing, let me restate the matter in terms of the political climate in general, and what it means from a Zen point-of-view, or at least from mine, informed by Zen practice and the teachings of Buddhism. If we shy away from the current campaign, with its extreme polarization and obvious threats to the operations of this democratic republic — as envisioned by the founding fathers — it may be tantamount to ignoring a train wreck, but one that is coming right at us. The Buddhist teachings of balancing wisdom with compassion may be uniquely suited to addressing the controversies of our time, the overarching theme of my second book, “The Razorblade of Zen.”

As a big-picture aside, consider the fundamental divide in Buddhist thought: We usually live in a dualistic frame of mind, coping with the everyday demands of life — in the 21st century as well as 2500 years ago. This is one of the great commonalities we have with Buddha and all of his descendants throughout Zen’s history in India, China, Korea, Japan, and on down to the present.

Yet Buddhism teaches that this “normal” worldview is somehow askew; that there is “the rest of the story,” referred to as nonduality. Zen holds that both can be true at the same time. The resolution of this apparent dichotomy is one of the many benefits of Zen meditation, but “it cannot be reached by feelings or consciousness; how could it involve deliberation?” according to Tozan Ryokai, founder of Soto Zen in China, circa 800 CE.

So we have to give up our intellectual approach, based on logic, to reach this meta-logical resolution, A.K.A. the ”Middle Way.”  This applies to so-called politics as well.

A concession to those who may feel their knees impulsively jerking: I do not intend to rehash the debate about the participation of Japanese Zen practitioners in the atrocities of WWII, nor any other historical period or event, but mean to focus laser-like on the application of Zen practice to our current situation only. With some recourse to the foundational documents, and what they might mean in the present circumstances of life in America, some 250 years later.

As an aside, for a sort of overriding historical benchmark, let me point out that Buddhism is some 2500 years old. Which is ten times the age of the USA. From which we might conjure an analogy to a 100-year-old elder compared to a 10-year old pre-adolescent. Indeed, the behavior of the American political cohort, as well as that of most of the hoi polloi, along with the values underpinning that behavior, may be seen as rather like that of a ten-year-old, blithely and blindly in hot pursuit of pleasure and short-term self-gratification, embracing one half of a familiar admonition from Buddha’s first sermon; paraphrasing:

 O monks, these two extremes ought not be followed by one going forth from the household life; what are the two? There is devotion to the indulgence of self-gratification, which is low, common; the way of ordinary people; unworthy and unprofitable. There is devotion to the indulgence of self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy and unprofitable.

He goes on to claim that he has found a way out of this seeming lesser-of-two-evils choice:

 Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata has realized the Middle Way.

 And to promise that the benefits of finding this middle way between the extremes pays off big-time:

 It gives vision; it gives knowledge; and it leads to calm, to insight, to awakening, to Nirvana.

To clear up some of the jargon, “Tathagata” is one of ten honorifics accorded Buddha during his lifetime, meaning something like “the thus-come one.” “Nirvana” is the state of ultimate liberation, sometimes misrepresented as a separate dimension much like the Western  concept of heaven or paradise, being a kind of polar opposite of “Samsara,” the everyday world of suffering.

The deeper teaching is that there can be no actual separation of samsara and nirvana, as they are interdependent and thus, mutually defining. the fault being, as usual, in the eye and mind of the beholder.

I hasten to add that, if this is good advice for monastics, how much more appropriate must it be for us householders, living in the midst of la vida loca?

It should be stated from the beginning that we do not view Zen as partisan in its outlook — it isn't right or left wing — though many would argue the point. And that is part of the point here — that while we will be mounting what may technically be defined as a series of “arguments” in future segments, it is not our intent to prove that either side of the ideological divide is indisputably in the right, and the other necessarily in the wrong. It may be possible that, as we hear repeatedly these days, “both things can be true at the same time.”

This is not to suggest a false equivalence, but to remember that, according to Zen, as well as modern brain science, different people actually do experience different realities, owing to the fact that our perceived reality is a reconstruction that occurs inside our minds, and cannot possibly reflect all the many aspects of any eventuality — the knowns; the known unknowns; and the unknown unknowns; to quote a former Secretary of Defense — that appear as the causes and conditions of a particular event.

Nonetheless, we might hope that by bringing the nondual approach of Zen to bear upon the dualistic thinking informing the political dialog, we may shed some light on the Middle Way as applied to the social sphere, all the while maintaining that any true insight into conflict resolution will necessarily begin in the personal sphere, in meditation.

To set the tone for the next segment, which will appear in the weekly UnMind podcast before the next monthly DharmaByte, let’s review the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

This seminal paragraph of this seminal document of the inchoate glimmering of the dawn of democracy will prove important, if introductory, to the idea of freedom in general — and its nature in Zen’s reality — in our further discussions of what bearing the social sphere of community, or sangha (including political ramifications) may have on our personal sphere of private practice of free will, with implications for the usual goal of happiness, as well as the transcendent goal of liberation in the spiritual sense.

Setting aside the “Nature’s God” terminology, which smacks intriguingly of traditional Buddhism’s “Vairocana Buddha” figure — the so-called “cosmic Buddha” — we might usefully consider conflating the “Laws of Nature” with some of the time-honored expressions of Dharma as law – i.e. the “law of the universe.”

A final assurance until next time we meet: To those groaning under the daunting prospect of weekly commentary on the passing political scene, not to worry: I will confine my comments on the campaign to a monthly Dharma Byte, followed by a single podcast expanding the text a bit on UnMind. The interim three weeks of podcasts will return to our overarching, ongoing thread of efforts to translate the liberating teachings of Buddhism and Zen into the contemporary idiom of the English language and the American culture. Please join us in this endeavor.  

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

This is UnMind, and I am producer Shinjin Larry Little.  After restarting the UnMind podcast in April of 20-23 with episode 106, we’ve met you almost every week for the past 33 weeks with fresh insights and teachings from Great Cloud Michael Elliston Roshi.  Due to multiple competing priorities at this time of year, we will take a brief and well-deserved break through the rest of the calendar year.  We look forward to meeting you all, and the new year, with more fresh content and insights about the interface of Zen and Design.   

As always, UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center, in Atlanta Georgia, and the Silent Thunder Order.  Find us on the web at A-S-Z-C dot O-R-G.  We welcome your support of these teachings via paypall or venmo: to donate please visit the giving page on our website.  Gassho.   

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In this segment of UnMind, I would like to return to the basics of Zen, after a foray into some of the darker topics of the times, in particular the horrific conditions of global strife in which we find ourselves immersed these days. It’s a bit like being trapped in the middle of a train wreck where we cannot turn our gaze away. Life has always existed on the edge of death, aging and sickness — the three cardinal marks of dukkha, or “suffering” — Buddha’s sine qua non of the conditions of existence as a sentient being.

But the sheer enormity of wasteful, infuriating carnage being inflicted upon human beings by other human beings in current hotspots around the globe — not to mention the local wildlife, livestock, and pet animals — has exceeded all bounds of dysfunctional perversity. It seems a vestigial throwback to more primitive times, and is beginning to look like proof positive of the apocalyptic vision of some religions: the Prince of Darkness, evil personified, indeed has dominion over the Earth, at least for now. The Great Deceiver is parading around in the guise of political leaders of supposedly enlightened government, celebrating the targeted collapse of civilization everywhere they direct their ire.    

In this context it may seem irresponsible, and even insane, to turn our attention to examining the fundamentals of Buddhism and Zen, which encourage studying the self, forgetting the self, and hopefully realizing the true meaning and purpose of our existence, when the people actually doing the damage are the least likely to have any such inclination to self-examination, let alone any realization of compassionate insight for others. But, as they say, when the oxygen masks drop because the airplane is losing altitude, put yours on first, or you will not be able to help others. In Zen, zazen is your oxygen mask.

ZEN ≠ ZAZEN ≠ MEDITATION

Zen is not equal to zazen, and zazen is not equal to “meditation” as commonly understood. Zazen is not the same as other meditations, and the term “Zen” should not be considered interchangeable with “zazen.” It may seem heretical to propose that Zen is not equal to zazen, or that zazen does not fit the Western cultural definition of meditation. But bear with me. There are so many alternative styles of meditation today that it is past time to differentiate Zen’s method from the rest. And to clarify that — while Zen and zazen cannot be separated — the terms are not interchangeable.

Zen is not synonymous with its meditation method, zazen, simply because there is so much more to Zen as a way of life, a philosophy, and as a formative force throughout history. This has primarily been true of the history of the East, but following its introduction to America in the late 1890s, and especially after WWII, westerners in general, and Americans in particular, have become more and more interested in Zen, along with a parallel engagement with other meditative traditions and styles, such as Yoga, as well as other Buddhist and non-Buddhist variations.

Zen is known as the meditation sect of Buddhism, but zazen is not its sole method of teaching. Zen boasts an extensive literature and liturgy on buddha-dharma as experienced and expounded by its adherents, traditionally beginning with Bodhidharma’s journey out of India, and tracing its evolution through China, Korea and Japan, to the Far East. However, distribution of the Buddhist canon, in the form of written sutras and commentaries, had preceded the 28th Patriarch by centuries, and his bringing Zen from the West to the East was definitely focused on the direct practice of upright sitting, or what we now refer to as zazen, or more precisely, shikantaza. Likewise, zazen and shikantaza may usefully be parsed as to their relative definitions as method and effect, respectively. More on this later.

ZAZEN & MEDITATION

The Great Sage’s meditation practice inside that cave at Shaolin Monastery did not conform to the traditional style known as dhyana, or contemplation, though this is how the local punditry interpreted his “wall-gazing Zen.” But he was not contemplating the wall. Dhyana, in the classic definition, involves a subject, or mind, meditating upon an actual, tangible object — such as a tree, in one famous example (from Hokyo Zammai—Precious Mirror Samadhi):

If you wish to follow in the ancient tracks

Please observe the sages of the past

One on the verge of realizing the buddha way

Contemplated a tree for ten kalpas

 “Ten kalpas” is a mighty long time. The entire universe passes through only four kalpas in its cycle, known variously as the empty kalpa, or kalpa of formation; the kalpa of continuance; the kalpa of decline; and the kalpa of disintegration. So ten kalpas embrace two-and-a-half cycles of universal evolution. Long time. But we digress.

 Generally speaking, dhyana, or contemplation meditation, continues until the observing mind finally runs out of ideas, exhausting all possible thoughts about the object; leaving a direct sensory awareness of the existential reality of what we call a “tree,” but without the overlay of conceptualization, categorization, and endless web of connections.

Bodhidharma, by turning abruptly to face the wall of the mountain, was demonstrating not contemplation, but shikantaza, or “objectless meditation,” which amounts to a kind of oxymoron, in conventional terms. Meditation is typically defined as focusing our attention on something, and so inherently implies a division of subject and object. If our direct experience in zazen eventually becomes objectless, then by definition it must also become subject-less (which, tellingly, is not a recognized construction in English; thus the hyphenation).

In the most salient sense, then, zazen transcends normal meditation. We might say that we transcend from the personal dimensions of posture, breathing, and paying attention to the senses, as well as the machinations of the mind — the “eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind” of the Heart Sutra — to a subtle awareness of something less definitive: meditating upon the whole, rather than any part. The observer is subsumed into the observed, like a holon in a holarchy. More on this later.

“Zen” is phonetic Japanese for “Ch’an,” which is phonetic Chinese for the Sanskrit “dhyana,” one of the traditional Six Paramitas, or “perfections” of Buddhism. Thus, because the origins of Zen meditation are not conflated with dhyana, but as going beyond contemplation, “Zen” is actually a kind of misnomer. Which is a good thing, because what Zen is pointing to cannot be named. In Taoism there is a similar idea, paraphrasing:

Naming is the source of all (particular) things

That which is eternally real is nameless

Zazen and shikantaza, as mentioned, can also usefully be parsed as to their relative functions as “method” and “effect,” respectively.

Holarchy & Holon

I first came across the term “holarchy” — as opposed to the more familiar “hierarchy” — in the form of a book, “The Essential Ken Wilber,” recommended by a member of the Suzuki lineage for its treatise on “integral spirituality.” The term, holarchy, was not coined by him, according to Google, which, like the old magic oracles, you can ask anything:

Arthur Koestler, author of the 1967 Book “The Ghost in the Machine,” coined the term holarchy as the organizational connections between holons (from the Greek word for "whole"), which describes units that act independently but would not exist without the organization they operate within.

Is a hierarchy a nested holarchy?

Instead of everything being explained in terms of smaller bits and ultimate particles—which was the way science worked in the modern era—we can now think of the universe holistically, organized in a series of levels of organization in a nested hierarchy or holarchy. At each level, things are both wholes and parts.

Some of the earliest examples of holarchic models may be found in the early teachings of Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, the Twelvefold Chain of interdependent  co-arising, the Five Aggregates and Six Senses, and so on. My model of the Four Nested Spheres of Influence, with personal at the center, surrounded by the social sphere, then the natural world, then the universal, is also like this, a holarchy.   These sets of components are not meant to be understood as entirely separate and apart from each other, but intricately interrelated, to use one of Matsuoka Roshi’s common expressions. In Zen, all seemingly disparate things are also connected, the ultimate expression of the current trope: “Both things can be true at the same time.”

We turn to zazen in our daily lives, in order to manifest a Zen life. Zen is the meditation sect of Buddhism, and zazen is the heart of Zen. The method of zazen is the main thing that we actually transmit, from one generation to the next. It is the same in music and other arts and sciences. No one can teach another music, as such, but someone can teach you how to play an instrument. It is up to you to find the music. Similarly, we can teach others this “excellent method” of zazen, as Master Dogen defined it. It is up to them to find the Zen.

The instrument we study, and play, in zazen, is the human body and mind, our essential inheritance enabling us to wake up fully, as did Buddha. Other species are not considered to have the level of consciousness necessary and sufficient to the challenge. Dogs may have buddha-nature, but like most humans, they may never realize it. Ironically, it seems that we have to stop “playing” the instrument of body-mind — that is, give up our impulse to control everything — in order to allow it to “drop off” (J. shinjin datsuraku) to reveal our true nature, which is not limited to this body and mind. Body and mind are not separate, and, again, both can be true at the same time. That is, mind and body may seem to be of different categories, yet they are intricately inter-related.

So sitting in zazen may be considered a subset of Zen, which is all-encompassing, and thus the holon of zazen is subsumed under the holon of Zen. But the necessity of zazen as central to apprehending the larger sphere of Zen, means that the two not only cannot be separated, but that the method cannot be separated from the larger effects, as in:

So minute it enters where there is not gap

So vast it transcends dimension

A hairsbreadth deviation and you are out of tune

This stanza from “Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind” by Master Kanchi Sosan, indicates another holarchy, that of the transcendent “IT” of Zen, and your personal relation to it. The slightest deviation on your part, in resisting or missing the point of this all-embracing teaching, is the primary source of your suffering. This basic idea of the asymmetrical nature of the relationship — of the holon of the “I” to that of the “IT” of Buddhism — is more directly captured some 200 years later, in Tozan Ryokai’s “Hokyo Zammai—Precious Mirror Samadhi:   

You are not it but in truth it is you

In zazen, as well as in Zen writ large, we are embracing the directive from the first poem, in which Master Sosan admonishes us, paraphrasing:

To move in the One Way

Do not reject even the world of senses and ideas

Indeed embracing them fully is identical with true enlightenment

Stay tuned. 

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

I sometimes ask the producer of the UnMind podcast whether there is any subject he would like me to address, that he thinks is timely, and that others might find to be of interest. He sent me the following note:

I was re-reading notes I've made in a Brad Warner book (“It Came From Beyond Zen”) and he made two points that are hitting me today. He interpreted Dogen's chapter “Kannon” and then commented on the interpretation:  

To me the basic idea of this whole essay is that compassion is intuitive. You can assess a given situation and think about how to deal with it compassionately. And you might even come up with the right answer that way. But in actual moment-by-moment interactions, compassion isn’t a matter decided by thought. You have to be able to see your instantaneous intuitive response and then do it. This is hard. One of the reasons we practice meditation is to help us see our intuitive responses more clearly.

Then:

A little further along I have Dogen say, “You give yourself to yourself, and you give everyone else to everyone else.” That’s pretty close to the original. This is important. If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of anyone else. There’s no great merit in burning yourself out for the sake of others, since you’ll only end up becoming a burden to those who’ll have to take care of you after you wreck yourself in the process.

Brad is a relatively younger and relatively famous Zen friend who has visited Atlanta from time to time; he and I once led a retreat together in Nashville, if memory serves. I agree with his point that compassion is basically intuitive, rather than entirely analytical. We speak of “practicing” compassion, and it is true that we can train ourselves to respond to individuals and situations more compassionately — that is, by seeing their side of the story, et cetera — but we should probably differentiate between practicing compassion and actually experiencing it. The word literally means “suffer with”: the prefix “com” meaning “with”; while “passion” is interchangeable with “suffering” as in “the passion of Christ.” Passion also means feeling strongly about something, as in “my passion is art” or music.

But back to the idea of experiential compassion, of which I have written before. When we realize that we are the recipient of compassion in the sense of suffering as allowing, as in “suffer the little children to come unto me” as attributed to Christ, we recognize that we exist by virtue of the universe allowing us to exist — in that “goldilocks zone” in space and time where our home planet is far enough from, and close enough to, the sun  that it can support life as we know it. The determinative parameters apparently do not have to be off by much to eliminate the possibility of sentient life on Earth.

So in some sense, the planet is willing to suffer with us, until we become insufferable, which threshold we may have already transgressed, what with climate change and all. Religious belief systems aside, we may be hanging by a thread that is ready to snap.

Ergo, we exist by dint of the compassion of the universe in its willingness to support life. Now, when we attribute “willingness” to the unconscious universe, eyebrows will be raised. The root word of willingness is “will,” and if we attribute will to the impersonal world in which we live, the next question will be, “Whose will?” It is counterintuitive to attribute will, unless it is to a “who.” But we can also look at will — the will to survive, the will to exist, and the will to propagate the species, for example — as disembodied will. Associated with will is the notion of intent — on both conscious and unconscious levels.

Is it our intent to exist? Did we “will” ourselves into existence? Is there such a thing as “free will?” Or do all willful acts come with a price tag? Are we delusional in imagining that we are exerting free will in coming and going in this universe?

As students at the Institute of Design, Illinois Tech, we would occasionally attend a movie series offered at the University of Chicago, in which they screened foreign films that would not be readily available in commercial theaters. After the feature they would show a short film or a series, one of which was entitled “The Lost Planet Ergro” if memory serves. These were in the category of “so bad they are good.” One of the leading characters in the script, when hearing some far-fetched explanation of the latest sci-fi phenomenon shown in the film would solemnly declare, “That’s too deep for me.” After so many repetitions following so many scenes, it became unbearably funny.

This is the way I feel about the speculations mentioned above. Apparently, Buddha did not exactly suffer fools gladly, and rejected flights of fancy from the practical standpoint of whether of not they addressed the problem at hand, that of the daily suffering in life. His experience in meditation apparently resolved many of the conflicts and conundrums we face in our lives, compounded, as they are by, complications of modern civilization.

The story goes that, in the face of irreconcilable differences between the way he wished things might be, and the way that things really were, and still are, he resorted to meditation. He sat down, in all humility, and faced the fact that, with all of his intelligence, education, and privileged position in the caste system of his time, he did not really know what he most desperately needed to know.

The story continues that he resolved to sit there and die, if need be, to settle once and for all the dilemma of his estrangement from the world, owing to the seemingly needless suffering he witnessed on a daily basis. He learned — and we should resolve — to “suffer with” the true causes and conditions of our existence, as he articulated them: aging, sickness, and death, to begin with; along with social dimensions of being away from our loved ones, and/or being with people we do not like.

The depth and breadth of his insight still resonates today, in the validation of the Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path as being as relevant to our times as to his. Although, as I mention in earlier episodes, the complexity of our context has multiplied geometrically.

If we take Buddha’s example and message to heart, we can see that the compassionate thing to do is to embrace karmic causality, and the causes and conditions within our personal, social, natural and universal spheres of action and influence. The atrocities we witness around the globe, which manifest as the opposite of compassion, and the quintessential nature of ignorance, do not lobby against the veracity of Buddha’s insight, but indeed confirm it in the most depressing manner imaginable. We do not have to imagine it because it is real, and has real karmic consequences.

The native American tribes had a unique take on this hypothesis, as expressed by one of their chiefs during the genocidal advent of the white European settlers. It went something like this: The tribal members who had been slaughtered in the conquest — men, women and children — would be reborn as future generations of the children of the invaders. The perfect retribution, big-time karmic consequence.

Whether or not you choose to honor or even consider this possibility, if those waging war on others, cavalierly bombing and otherwise laying waste to noncombatant civilians, were to believe that, like chopping down weeds after they had gone to seed, their very efforts are simply multiplying the future ranks of the perceived enemy, it might give them pause. If the “final solution” is genocide, wiping out the entire “other,” but it turns out not to work, but in fact simply kicks the can down the road a generation or two, the futility of the warring endeavor might finally come crashing home.

This conclusion will never be drawn in the context of theistic beliefs in the eternal soul, of course. Unless they allow for some version of rebirth or reincarnation. Buddhism does not hold out this possibility in order to debate or refute contrary ideas. But what if it is true? Wouldn’t the intrinsic irresolution, itself, perhaps contribute to a more moderate, compassionate approach to — if not loving thine enemies — at least recognizing that they may prevail, in spite of, or as a direct result of, our best efforts to eliminate them? As Master Dogen reminds us:

Yet in attachment, blossoms fall

In aversion, weeds spread

And as one of our members reminded us when we were weeding the parking lot of the prior Zen center: “Weeds are flowers we don’t want; flowers are weeds we do want.”  But the herbicides that we spew over the land, in order to eradicate those flowers we identify as weeds in the patch, ultimately blow back our way, often taking our favorite blossoms with it. We are all, like it or not, forced to experience compassion, “suffering with,” suffering the ignorance of our fellow human beings. Suffering fools, if not gladly, as the saying goes. Karma and its consequences are not individuated; they come bundled with the species.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

I hesitate to add yet another voice to the cacophony of cries of agony, suffering, outrage and acrimony emanating out of Israel, Gaza, and surrounding Arab states, exacerbated by the 24/7 chattering class. Not to mention the ongoing carnage in Ukraine, which seems to have slipped under the global radar. But I fear that if we in Zen do not try to address these terrible global realities in the context of Buddhism, it may be taken as an indication, or an admission on our part, that Zen, along with its teachings and practice, have finally faded into irrelevance, in the face of such intractable 21st century problems. But as Katagiri Roshi reminds us, “You have to say something.” And Matsuoka Roshi did not shy from taking on the atrocities of his day. Check out his collected talks.

Actually, just the opposite is true. It is not that the Zen Way is a panacea, or that it offers a silver bullet that will somehow “fix” a situation that has been several millennia in the making. But Buddhism points to the fundamental origin of the problem, traditionally defined as “craving” or “thirst.” The difficulty is that we have to individually “abandon” that craving, in order to enable the cessation of suffering, not only for ourselves but for others. But the individuals directly affected by the war seem to have no power over, or protection from, the influence and actions of the masses.

So it would seem that our challenge may be to define the actual source of the conflict in the Middle East as originating in some form of craving, one that has been in force since long before the founding of Israel, just after the end of WWII. We must concede that the abandonment of that craving may or may not be possible, given the volatility of the situation, and the likelihood that cooler heads will not prevail for some time.

According to my limited understanding of Buddhism, craving begins before birth, innate in the very desire to exist. This idea amounts to a pre-Enlightenment or proto-scientific hypothesis, an attempt to explain Nature’s overwhelming fecundity, the irresistible will to life, manifested as the innumerable cascade of seeds, sperm, spores, and other forms of burgeoning life, populating the natural sphere in all corners of the planet.  

In sentient beings such as humans, this craving is clearly inchoate, beginning before or at conception and continuing in the womb, arising out of basic ignorance of the causes and conditions of our own origins. Whatever level of awareness can be attributed to the developing embryo, it is of a relatively primitive nature, compared to its later stages of maturation.

Buddha made a noble attempt to model the process of growth of sentient beings, arising from primordial ignorance under the influence of mental formations, slowly differentiating the senses, and finally segueing through birth, aging, and death; then beginning another round through rebirth, in the teaching known as the “Twelvefold Chain of Interdependent Co-Arising” (Skt: pratityasamutpada). Find the link to the illustration in the show notes for this segment.

Note that “mental formations” (#2) comprises the second link in the chain, arising in the womb out of the first link, the primordial sea of ignorance (#1) from which the universe arises. These formations are the motives, intentions and desires that underly all other dimensions of life, and which underpin our natural consciousness (#3) as a sentient being. The growth of the fetus continues, following its DNA blueprint — as we now know from modern genetics — resulting in a particular form (#4) of the organism; which leads to development of the six senses (#5), and contact (#6) with the outer world; which, in the context of the mother’s womb, would arise from subtle sensation (#7) and perhaps a level of subliminal perception (#8), such as hunger experienced as craving (#9); which then develops into clinging (#10); leading to “becoming” (#11) — in the most general sense of the word — in modern terms, ontogeny; and finally to birth (#12), which ultimately reverts to aging and death (#13). Then, according to this theory, the cycle begins all over again. Tradition has it that it takes three full cycles through the chain to complete the process.

So what does all this have to do with war, let alone the karmic consequences we might associate with war? Modern biology might find this model overly simplified, but I propose that we apply it to the arising of social awareness in the individual. We may find  some linkage as to how a chain of conflicts arising between individuals can spread within a community, and between ethnic groups, eventually fueling international strife.

One of the guest speakers at a conference we held in collaboration with the Department of Religion of Emory University in 2000, structured around the scholar-practitioner divide and focused on the teachings of Master Dogen, was asked, during the Q&A following his address, whether Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims, could truly engage in a dialog. His answer was “No.” As long as they are Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims, no dialog is possible.

At the risk of repeating myself, allow me to take this moment to point out the obvious: Buddha was not a Buddhist, any more than Christ was a Christian. These concepts came into the vernacular following their life and death on Earth. They have now become additional labels for identifying and differentiating the constructed self.

During his recent peacemaking trip to Israel, president Joe Biden was quoted as saying something like: “Whether you are Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, if you give up who you are, the terrorists have won.” But Buddhism suggests that we should do precisely that. We are to thoroughly examine the reality of this “who you are” — the imputed or constructed “self” — with a judicious skepticism, particularly in meditation.

When we do so, we are told, we will see through the outer appearance of the self, penetrating to the emptiness at its core. This “emptiness” is an inadequate translation of the Sanskrit shunyatta, which points to the dynamic, ever-changing reality underlying all phenomena, and not a vacuous, woeful, or frightening void of nothingness, as it is sometimes interpreted.

Perhaps we can draw an analogous parallel between the progress of a single person through these stages of life, as articulated by Buddha, to that of the tribe, or community, a group of individuals united by a common gene pool and shared biological and geographical roots, as well as agreed-upon social mores and norms. When two such groups clash, the knee-jerk reaction is to point fingers and blame the other side for starting the current conflict. The response is always to reflect the blame back on the accuser, in a seemingly endless regress into the fog of history. Observers seem compelled to weigh in on one side or the other.

If we look at the suffering in an individual’s life, we might entertain the same question: Whose fault is this? Who started this? Whose idea was this? Theistic philosophies have a ready answer — that this life, with all its imperfections, is a reflection of God’s will — moving in mysterious ways that we cannot hope to comprehend. Applying this same nostrum to international strife seems largely an evasive maneuver, an avoidance of the responsibility of actually resolving the dispute in human terms.

In Zen, we embrace the idea that, if anyone is to blame for our individual life, it is us. The repentance verse expresses this notion concisely:

All my past and harmful karma

From beginningless greed, hate and delusion

Born of body, mouth, and mind,

I now fully avow.

“Avow” is a rather archaic term, meaning to assert or confess openly. In other words, we are owning it — assuming responsibility for the unintended consequences of our own behavior — we are not blaming others. We might want to blame our parents, and their parents, another endless regress, as the proximate cause of our own existence. Good luck with that. Even if they are at fault, we cannot hold them accountable, at least not for long. After their demise, we are left to face the same reality, without the scapegoat.

Similarly, in international conflicts, which often amount to tribal warfare on steroids, it might be helpful for all sides to own up to their own culpability in what has come to pass, as president Biden did in recalling the overwrought reaction to the 911 crisis. This would amount to a simple recognition and acceptance of one of the seminal marks of dukkha: “imperfection.” Admitting that “mistakes were made” — before the situation accelerates to an irresolvable level of mutually-inflicted violence.

One of the black marks on US exceptionalism — that of Hiroshima & Nagasaki — has become the mother of all mistakes that have ever been made on the global stage. The country that first dropped the Big Bomb on civilians is hardly in a position to lecture others on the morality of human decency in following the “laws of war,” the mother of all oxymorons. War is precisely the end of law, in any human sense of the term.

Where people — or, for that matter, any sentient beings of the same species — are separated, they tend to evolve in different directions. This principle of Darwin’s “Origin of Species” theory can explain a lot, such as the development of varying cuisines, dialects and languages, as well as the susceptibility of isolated populations to propaganda.

What if the appropriate authority, such as the United Nations, undertook a program of social exchange in all such closed-border situations as that of Israel and the Gaza strip? What that might look like would be providing safe passage from each side of the border to the other for limited groups of families or age groups, who would spend a limited amount of time in the company or homes of their counterparts in the “other” culture, the designated enemy. This is an old idea whose time may have come around again. If people get to know each other on a personal, more intimate basis, and “break bread” together, they are a lot less likely to turn on each other for no reason, and to find common ground.

Wasting the opportunity of a lifetime in the service of a questionable, survival-oriented self finds its analog in following political leaders who are similarly self-striving, finding at the end-of-the-day, or at the end of your life, that not only are they, your titular leaders, unappreciative of your loyalty, but that they even regard you with contempt, as part of the problem, or at best a pawn in their geopolitical chess game.

In the personal sphere of meditation, you may fight your own war, and hopefully find your individual salvation. Then, and only then, you may be able to share it with others in, and outside of, your social sphere. Good luck with that. Don’t give up.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the last segment we ended with the suggestion that you, dear listener, might construct your own Noble N-fold Path based on your vision of the Noble Truths, with the proviso that you may have to articulate what the existence of suffering means to you, and how you might pursue a path to its cessation in modern times. In doing so you may discover that there are more origins of suffering in your life than simple craving, although craving is not simple.

You may also find, upon closer examination, that the cessation of suffering is going to require giving up more than your basic biological cravings, and that your personal path to salvation will have more than eight basic dimensions involved. However, most of the more detailed dimensions and distractions in daily life today will probably loosely correlate to those that the Buddha defined. 

Let me know if, in the interim, you have thought about this, and engaged in the creative exercise I suggested — that you make an attempt to redefine the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path in your own terms. I would be interested to see what you came up with.

 In this segment, as promised, I will attempt to expand the context further, integrating the original four as defined by Buddha with those surrounding spheres of influence that have impact on our daily lives, as well as on our contemporary practice of Zen, including the personal and social we have discussed so far, as well as the natural and universal spheres. 

 Go to the UnMind webpage to see my diagram of the nesting spheres of influence combined with the Four Noble Truths.  The link to the page is in the show notes for this episode.

 This illustration attempts to paint a picture of the comprehensive context of a modern Zen life and practice of the Eightfold Path, tying together our current, more expansive grasp of the surrounding universe, with Buddha’s Four Noble Truths.  These are the Four Spheres, those surrounding layers of reality in which we find ourselves enmeshed, and are directly or indirectly influenced by, in the ongoing management of our lives. The most central is the Personal sphere, the next level out being the Social, then the Natural, and finally, the Universal. They are not truly separate, of course, but relatively so.

THE UNIVERSAL: EXISTENCE OF SUFFERING

Our meditative practice is centered in the personal experience we find on the cushion, the most intimate dimension, inseparable from the other three. Buddha’s teaching of the Existence of suffering — and his charge that we are to fully understand its existence — we might assume to lie within the innermost circle, the Personal. But its true home is in the outermost, the Universal realm. After all, nothing, anywhere in the Universe, is exempt from dukkha, as the principle of change. Galaxies colliding in outer space are an instance of dukkha.

That we are, each and all of us, caught up in incessant change, does not reduce dukkha to a merely personal concern, however, from either a positive or negative perspective. We are neither the chosen, most favored, beings in this spectacle; nor are we the sole victims. Dukkha is not a respecter of persons.

 The universal dimension of zazen includes the physical posture sinking into a profound stillness, which lies at the heart of all motion (captured by the Ch’an expression “mokurai”); and settling into precise alignment with the field of gravity. The term used to name this profound equilibrium is “Samadhi.” Zazen-samadhi transcends the Personal and Social spheres, linking into the Natural and Universal forces of the planet and the solar system, as we hear in the Ch’an poem Hokyo Zammai—Precious mirror Samadhi:

 Within causes and conditions time and season

It is serene and illuminating

So minute it enters where there is no gap

So vast it transcends dimension

A hairsbreadth’s deviation and you are out of tune

All change, from the most minute in the microcosmos to the outermost reaches of the universe, is a manifestation of dukkha, which is, however, “serene and illuminating.” All forms, including solid, liquid and gaseous states of matter in continual flux, provide examples of the Universal impinging upon the Personal. Our very life depends upon these three basic states of matter, as well as the functioning principles of organic chemistry, or biology, which overlap with the Natural. We cannot personally control, or negate, these influences to any significant degree. But we can come into harmony with them if we tune ourselves to their frequency.

THE NATURAL: ORIGIN OF SUFFERING

The Origin of suffering, usually translated as “craving” or “thirst,” Buddha taught that we are to abandon, again as fully as possible. Craving would most logically find its home in the Natural sphere, as it comes bundled with sentient life. As attributed to the plant kingdom, for example, to claim evidence of craving may seem a bridge too far, but we describe trees and grasses as thirsty, especially under increasingly common conditions of drought as one result of climate change.

It is even more difficult to defend craving as manifested in the mineral kingdom, though certain chemical reactions, and even the simple dynamic of osmosis, or wicking, via capillary attraction, appears to mimic a form of thirst, admittedly inchoate, and unconscious.

The main point is that while we tend to own our own feelings of craving, struggling with guilt and other obsessions as a consequence, they are clearly and largely a result of being a physical being — an animal — one endowed with painfully intense self-awareness. “Born of body, mouth and mind” is the operative phrase in Buddhism’s Repentance verse. Most of our suffering comes with the territory. And therefore we are not responsible for it, only for what we do, or do not do, about it.

The Natural sphere is not only the macro environment around us, but also the micro environ within our body, including the biological, chemical and electrical processes of breathing, digesting, and the rest of the inconceivable scope of life functions built into existence as a sentient being. It is all changing constantly, and subliminally to our typical awareness.

THE SOCIAL: CESSATION OF SUFFERING

The Cessation of suffering, which we are to fully realize, I position primarily in the Social sphere, though the most efficacious means for realizing it may reside in the most intimate inner circle of the Personal. A transformational event that Buddha identified as a “turning about in the inmost consciousness,” is tantamount to salvation in Zen. But this is not the salvation of an eternal soul in the afterlife.

Personal suffering of aging, sickness and death — including birth as the leading cause of death — is quintessentially Natural. This process follows the “Dharma” as the natural law of sentient life. It is natural, in the psychological sense, that we look for personal salvation in the face of such suffering. And it is understandable that we look to the social level — of advanced medical treatment, for example — for solutions to mitigate personal suffering. However, in the most fully developed and comprehensive of the Mahayana teachings, the Bodhisattva Vow, we find that no one individual can be saved while the rest remain mired in suffering. In Zen, the most central form, and cause, of suffering is our willful ignorance, and resistance.

THE PERSONAL: PATH TO CESSATION

The Eightfold Path, which Buddha challenges us to fully follow, I place primarily in the Personal sphere. It forms a bridge into the Social, most obviously, but has resonance with the Natural and Universal spheres as well. While the usual linear sequence begins with Right View, and ends with Right Meditation, in actual Zen practice, the sequence is reversed.

Some sects do not encourage students to meditate until they have some grounding in doctrine. Zen subscribes to the sink-or-swim approach, trusting the practice of upright, seated meditation to have an immediate, positive effect, encouraging followers to do follow-up research to clarify their experience. Engaging fully in Right Meditation, the practice of Right Mindfulness and Right Effort will follow naturally. These three comprise Right Discipline. This necessarily begins in the Personal sphere of practice-experience on the cushion, but mindfulness and effort obviously carry over into the Social realm.

Right Speech, Action and Livelihood, taken together as Right Conduct, are most  engaged in the Social sphere, though our actions and livelihood clearly affect the Natural realm, as in examples of mismanagement of resources.

Finally, Right View, and Right Thought, when combined, comprise Right Wisdom in the threefold Path, complementing Right Discipline and Conduct. Wisdom consists in the evolution of our worldview to approximate that of the Buddha, or Buddhism, through trial-and-error, engaging the other dimensions of the Eightfold Path.

THE INSEPARABILITY OF PERSONAL, SOCIAL, NATURAL & UNIVERSAL

Dividing the Path into digestible bites does not imply that such separations are absolute. All diagrams are Venn diagrams, to a degree, whether of Buddhist teachings, or other areas of human endeavor. The personal cannot be separated from the social, the natural, or the universal, in reality, nor can wisdom, conduct, and discipline, whether right or wrong.

The natural sphere entails stewardship of the environment, including the survival of the species. Extinction of species in the ecosystem, as a result of insensitivity to long-term consequences, and callous disregard for the sake of short-term profit, becomes very personal in terms of its impact on individuals, social in its effect on whole communities.

Exhaustive mining of mineral resources provides another example of the connection between our personal needs and the dictates of Nature writ large. The most direct and obvious solution to the social and natural “tragedy of the commons” is for each individual to reduce craving on a personal level.

Zazen, which seems to be Personal, disengaged navel-gazing, is actually the most direct gate to the Social, Natural and Universal dimensions of our existence. When we leave the cushion and re-enter the fray, the benefits of our practice come with us. Please examine this thoroughly in practice — thank you, Dogen.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Closing out our exploration of the “three marks” of dukkha, in this episode we will take a look, close-up-and-personal, at death. In summary, our confrontation with and embrace of the three marks varies according to their universal natures, as well as to our personal nurturing in their recognition and acceptance.

Aging is predictable, but typically sneaks up on us, moving far too gradually to register in our youth, even nowadays with our ubiquitous mirrors, selfies, and TikTok videos – none of which our ancestors had in abundance. Today’s living generations may be the most self-conscious in the history of humankind. The famous “polishing a tile to make a mirror” koan anecdote reflected the fact that mirrors were originally of polished metal. Narcissus, remember, fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. By contrast, Tung-shan, a 9th century monk, was enlightened upon seeing his face for the first time, reflected in the water. A contemporary stand-up comic, who shall remain nameless, asked, “Did’ja ever look in the mirror in the morning and think, “That can’t be accurate!”?

Sickness, whether life-threatening or not, can land like a ton of bricks, flattening you for the moment – and often for the foreseeable future – with the rate of recovery dependent upon many factors, including aging. Sickness can often be the death-knell, as a diagnosis of cancer once was. As one ages, the body becomes less immune to the predations of bacteria and viruses, it seems. Today the threat of mental illness, leading to suicide, also looms large.

Usually, the threat of death from natural causes may be safely ignored, postponed, or even denied, until it can’t.  But sudden death is even more unpredictable than sickness, and can come in such a variety of modes today, including natural and man-made disasters, which are popping up with greater and greater frequency, notably side-effects of climate change, such as the ever-increasing statistical rate of death from extreme heat. America seems to be the poster-boy for death by guns, accidental or intentional, now one of the major causes of death for children in the USA. Death from complications in childbirth is still far too common, particularly for non-white women. And then there is always stress, aggravated by habits such as smoking. If one thing doesn’t get you, something else will, in the end. Death and taxes, as we say.

I must note in passing that much of the hysteria we witness on ideological and political fronts of the public discourse seems motivated by an underlying fear, which appears to stem from the triple threat of aging, sickness and death. Witness the “worship of youth” culture, “self-improvement” programs, and anti-aging products aimed at prolonging vim and vigor and extending life itself as long as possible. 

This primal, largely subliminal fear is often projected onto the identified “other,” a form of transference that – like the old “I’m rubber, you’re glue” trope – deflects self-criticism, in favor of defining each and every conflict in terms of self-preservation, and resorting to blaming others. As the Tao te Ching reminds us, “When the blaming begins, there is no end to the blame.” Buddha’s original analysis of the constructed self’s fundamentally dissatisfactory nature of reality, and our place, individually and collectively, writ large. The most dissatisfactory of all affronts and indignities to our ego are the three marks.

If, on the other hand, we could all embrace, in all humility, the realities of aging, sickness and death as being perfectly natural and okay, the resulting equanimity of outlook might go a long way to ameliorating the insane intensity of conflict in the world. Aging gracefully includes embracing illness and death as built-in, intrinsic to the natural order of things. How much of our time, energy, attention and resources are dedicated to resistance to this fact – a fundamental denialism that leads naturally to the abdication of truth – in favor of our favorite fantasies as to the nature and central meaning of life?

A young Rinzai Zen priest named Hasegawa published a book titled “The Cave of Poison Grass.” He mentioned the fact that most people seem to postpone confronting reality until, finally, they are on their death bed. He declared that this is too late – “like eating soup with a fork” – a memorable phrase. He insisted that we have to confront this “Great Matter” of life-and-death while we are young, and have sufficient strength and energy to overcome it.

In the lore of Zen there is a Till-Eulenspiegel-like narrative that captures its sometimes irreverent attitude toward life and death, supposedly a true story. A monk realized that he was to die soon, and began asking other monks what they knew about, or had heard about, others dying. He was curious to know if anyone had ever died standing on their head, but nobody had. So sure enough, when the time came, he stood on his head in the corner and died. His sister happened to be a nun, and when she came to visit for the funeral, the corpse was still standing there in the corner. In disgust, she kicked it over, declaring that he had never had any respect for anything in life, and he still had no respect in death. The story goes that they buried him upside-down.

An old saying in Zen says to “stamp life and death on your forehead and never let it out of your mind.” This is not a mark of morbid obsession with death, but simply recognizes that there is no life without death – birth is the leading cause of death.

Instead of bemoaning the fact that life inevitably passes back into the great remix that is the universe – the wave returning to the ocean – we embrace the inevitability of “shuffling off this mortal coil” as a kind of relief. As Mark Twain was said to have asked, when in his old age reporters inquired as to whether he wasn’t afraid to die, why would he be afraid of returning to where he came from?

It is the stuff of science fiction to imagine a future in which medical science has treated the phenomenon of dying as an unnecessary aberration, a kind of illness, and come up with techniques such as cryogenic freezing of human remains, genetic mutation, and cultivating transplant organs and limbs to achieve what is, for all practical purposes, human immortality. The question becomes, would you really want to live forever?

Life takes a great deal of its meaning from the inevitability of death, which is often considered in opposition to life. But Master Dogen treats both birth death as another nondual, complementary dyad, from Genjokoan–Actualizing the Fundamental Point:

Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash you do not return to birth after death

This being so it is an established way in buddha-dharma to deny that birth turns into death

Accordingly birth is understood as non-birth

It is an unshakable teaching in Buddha’s discourse that death does not turn into birth

Accordingly death is understood as non-death   

Birth is an expression complete this moment

Death is an expression complete this moment

They are like winter and spring

You do not call winter the beginning of spring nor summer the end of spring

In this wonderful analogy, Master Dogen places birth and death on a continuum, each as an “expression complete this moment,” and yet undeniably entangled. We might ask: An expression of what? and the answer would seem to be “life itself.” So birth, which we celebrate, and death, which we mourn, are seen to be inflection points, rather equal in import, in the continuum of life.

When my older brother was dying in hospice, I spent about a week attending on him as he drifted in and out of consciousness. I picked up a pamphlet at the clinic where he was cared for, called “The Eleventh Hour.” It was written by a Christian woman, a clergy member or teacher of some sort, but she never once mentioned Jesus or God. One line I recall said something like, “Birth is the death of whatever precedes birth. Death is the birth of whatever follows death.” Very Zen.

I hope this brief foray into the most dispositive and determinative factors defining our life experience helps to allay any unreasoning fear you may have of these time-honored Three Marks. Along with Buddhism’s Three Poisons of greed, anger or hatred, and delusion or folly, they form the nexus of all that is wrong with the human universe in the personal sphere. When we move into the next outer layer, the social sphere, we confront them on a more global scale as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Death, Famine, War, and Conquest. Today we might be coerced to add even more unintended consequences to the deluge, including increasing population pressure and worldwide immigration, as well as advances in technology that tend to frustrate, rather than facilitate, our presumably inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

Speaking of which, in the first UnMind episode of the upcoming month, we will look over our shoulder once again to the dread prospect of Election Year Zen, which is gaining on us, assessing whether or not we can see any light of compassion or wisdom at the end of that maddeningly long tunnel. Please add a seatbelt to your zafu and strap in.

The haiku poem on the “grim reaper” is from a 2020 series called “Dharma Dreams from Great Cloud.” The text, titled “Swords into Plowshares,” will form the basis of July’s UnMind. If you have any remaining questions as to why I feel it important to examine the current political pageantry from the perspective of ancient Buddhist teachings, which may strike you as outdated and irrelevant, please email me about it.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

To elicit the bigger picture of the place of Zen and zazen in our world of practice, I would like to refer you to a couple of semantic models illustrating the interrelationships, or operative interfaces, of the various components of the Four Noble Truths, along with the dimensions of the Noble Eightfold Path that we all encounter on a daily basis, both on the cushion and off.

Turning to Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths, we see that they can be modeled as a system, the simplest geometry for which is the four-pointed tetrahedron (a  “system” here defined as anything exhibiting an inside and an outside). The model shows their interconnectedness, from one to two to three to four, from two to three and four, et cetera. There are six relationships of the four points, to each other. How does the existence of suffering relate to its origin, craving? And so on and on.

 Go to the UnMind webpage to see my diagram of the Four Noble Truths as a four-pointed tetrahedron. The link to the page is in the show notes for this episode. 

The four are usually presented in a linear layout in text, beginning with the first Noble Truth of the Existence of suffering (dukkha), followed by its Origin; its Cessation; finally the Noble Eightfold Path, which leads to the cessation of suffering in daily life.

First, we must challenge the appropriateness of the word “suffering” to translate the meaning of the Sanskrit word, “dukkha.” Unfortunately, suffering is fraught with narrow connotations of human pain, not only physical, but emotional, mental, and even existential in nature. But I do not believe that this is the intended meaning of the original term. Buddha was expounding a universal principle — that of unrelenting, inexorable change — which we naturally interpret from the perspective of our personal angst, as “suffering.” The Noble Eightfold Path extends this description of reality into a prescription for practice in daily life. Visit the webpage in the show notes to see the diagram illustrating the interconnectedness and interdependence of the elements in the Eightfold Path. A common example: “you talk the talk but you do not walk the walk”; a functional disconnect between right speech and right action.

As you reflect upon the Noble Eightfold Path, consider how the interdependence of the eight dimensions reinforce each other: How does Right View influence Right Thought, or Right Speech?  Where does Right Action connect with Right Livelihood and Right Effort? Is Right Mindfulness dependent upon Right Effort, and does it then lead to Right Meditation, or is it the other way around?

Zen tradition claims to transmit the “right meditation” practiced by Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha and progenitor of Buddhism. But we recognize the absolute relevance and modernity of his message, privileging the simplified approach of Zen. Note that the eight dimensions are numbered in reverse order: “right view,” number one, being more a result than a starting point; right meditation, number eight, is where we must begin.  

As mentioned in UnMind number 131, “The Noble N-Fold Path”, the traditional division of Buddhism’s Noble Eightfold Path may have to be updated to reflect the complexity of living in modern times. Nowadays we might want to add more dimensions to the original eight prescribed for practice in a simpler time. Perhaps today we would end up with a Noble Thirty-Two-fold Path as the last of the Sixteen Noble Truths.

In Un Mind number 131, I mused upon the notion of adding “right balance” to the mix, what with the geometrically expanded choices we face in pursuing right speech, action and livelihood, and the challenges of living a Zen life in the midst of over-choice: the temptations and distractions pulling on us from all directions while we navigate the tightrope and keep all the balls in the air. We hope that we can “have it all,” especially compared to our ancestors in Zen, but “living large” exacts a steep price.

To cite just a few of the dimensions of our modern milieu, distinctions with a tangible difference from ancient times, challenging our sense of balance today:

TRAVEL: Buddha’s “ecological sweepout,” to borrow a Bucky Fullerism, was limited to the radius he could reach on foot, by donkey or elephant, though there were likely significant incoming influences from the Silk Road and other trade routes. One of our senior priests made the point that for the first time in history, every individual on the planet is potentially only one plane ride away from every other person. This has all kinds of implications, some positive, some not so much, such as the boost it gives to viral vectors spreading disease globally with blinding speed.

TECHNOLOGY: The interconnectivity of masses of people around the world, with advances in applications that provide automatic translation of languages, live video and audio recording and reporting of events on an unprecedented scale and scope of detail and timeliness, is a double-edged sword, a tool that can be used for good or ill, depending on the intent of senders and receivers of the message. The old-school formulas - that “The Medium is the Message”; communication is not the message sent, but the message received - no longer hold in a world of technology that allows anyone to put any words they wish in the mouths of anyone they want. It is impossible to catch up with even the jargon that attempts to keep up with scams popping up like weeds in the garden. From a Buddhist perspective, the upside is that world-around digital media have established a technical analogy to Avalokiteshvara, who “sees and hears the suffering of the world,” and comes to help, in her mission as the Bodhisattva of Compassion. One can hope.

EDUCATION: In Buddha’s time, and for the vast majority of the development of human civilization, choices in education were severely limited, primarily to learning the trade or craft of one’s ancestral family. Compare to today’s nearly unlimited potential for social mobility, promising transcendence of the caste or class system, implicit or explicit, into which we are born. One current downside is the emergence of massive student loan debt, a significant burden for those who have elected to finance higher degrees, which do not guarantee a successful career with the ability to pay off that debt.

CORPORATIZATION: An awkward word to label an awkward development. Another significant difference in our world and that of the Buddha is the predominance of the corporate entity, which I suppose first reared its ugly head with the formation of the city-states of Greece, and reached its apogee in the Citizens United decision of SCOTUS. Not that corporations are necessarily bad; there are some that are dedicated to doing good, such as NFP 501c3s incorporated for various charitable missions. But the human beings populating the corporate entities, as members of the board and other controlling positions, are still human, and can do more harm with the collective power and reach of the corporation, than they might be able to do individually.

I could go on. For example, with the current spate of international wars, widespread drug addiction, and the senseless gun violence that have become our new, dystopian “normal,” were certainly not the norm 2500 years ago. But suffice it to say that Buddha did not have to cope with this scale and scope of the onslaught of global insanity, though the self-striving nature of humanity underlying the chaos has not fundamentally changed since his times. We would likely find it unlikely to find an apt analogy to Dogen’s time, let alone Buddha’s.

When we comprehend the Four Noble Truths as mutually interacting, but constrained within the limits of the context of early Indian subculture, we can update them to the 21st century by constructing our own menu of actionable items based on today’s realities. You could, with some imagination, build your own personal set of Noble Truths, four or more, and suss out the vectors of a modern Path that transcend those outlined by the Buddha. He would appreciate your efforts, I am sure.

Let me encourage you to engage in such a creative exercise between now and when we meet again. Contemplate what the “existence of suffering” means to you, how you are to “fully understand it”; what attitude adjustments and actionable items on your particular path may be undertaken to transform that suffering into the right view of wisdom. Remember to consider the relationships between the various path factors that you identify, rather than treat each in isolation. 

In the next segment, I will attempt to expand the context even further, into those surrounding spheres of influence on our daily lives, as well as on our contemporary practice of Zen, well beyond the personal and social, to include the natural and the universal. Buckle up. 

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the next two segments: number 132 and 133 in the sequence, we repeat a subject that we took up in number 113 and 114; namely the buddha nature versus human nature; some of the sameness and differences between what we refer to as “human nature” and what we refer to in Zen as our “original nature,” or “buddha-nature,” “buddha” meaning “awakened one.” Please bear with the repetition; there is new material here as well. And much of what is to be said about the place of Zen in America bears repetition.

As promised in the last segment of UnMind, we will continue examining the social, or “corporate” expressions of human nature — versus what we call “buddha nature” — with an eye to those corporate entities growing out of Zen practice, such as the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and the Silent Thunder Order, as examples. Master Dogen mentions the constructions of humankind, indicating that they, too, are part and parcel of the nature and manifestation of buddha-dharma:

Grass, trees, and lands which are embraced by this Teaching

together radiate a great light and endlessly expound

the inconceivable profound dharma

Grass, trees, and walls bring forth this Teaching for all beings

common people as well as sages

and they in accord extend this dharma

for the sake of grass, trees, and walls

In India the original Order of monks and nuns apparently camped out in the woods, and when the monsoons came, retired to caves in the mountains. Eventually, patrons built dwellings for them, the first “walls” to house the followers of Buddha’s teachings. Somewhere I came across a saying, something to the effect that, when a precious jewel appears in the world, not to worry, a container will appear to protect it. The “precious jewel” is the buddha-dharma, and the container consists of the various temples, practice centers, and monasteries that have been established to protect and preserve it. The Dharma opening verse that we typically chant at the beginning of a discourse says:

The unsurpassed, profound and wondrous Dharma is rarely met with

Even in a hundred, thousand, million kalpas

Now we can see and hear it, accept and maintain it

May we unfold the meaning of the Tathagata’s truth

Assuming we can “see and hear” the Dharma, it becomes our charge to “accept and maintain” it. In the context of modern society, this means not only providing the physical plant, the “walls” within which followers are invited to practice, but also providing the corporate structure that will enable others to maintain the program of promulgating Dharma teachings and propagating the direct practice of meditation, through their financial and in-kind donations. For this reason, and other related incentives, it becomes necessary to establish a 501c3 not-for-profit corporation in order to maintain Zen practice interfacing with other, governmental corporate entities. But some caveats are in order when doing so in the furtherance of Zen, in light of its skepticism regarding the constructed self.  

Where Zen calls into question the reification of even the human entity, or being, and its extension to the concept of a self, the soul of theism, or atman of Hinduism; the reification of a corporate entity is seen as equally, or even more, suspect.

ASZC was incorporated in 1977 to facilitate the mission of meeting the public demand for what we refer to as genuine Zen practice, in particular its uniquely simple and direct meditation. What we refer to as “Soto Zen” or “Dogen Zen” is different from all the other alternatives on offer. Just as what Buddhism teaches as its worldview is starkly different from the various religions and ideologies dominant in our culture.

STO was incorporated in 2011 because the stress and strain on the board of directors and committees of the ASZC had become too much to handle, with the growth of our network of affiliates, which were meeting the increasing demand for Zen practice; and the growing awareness of ASZC and STO as meeting that demand in a uniquely user-friendly manner, stressing the practicality and best practices of householder Zen.

BUT

We should not be confused as to the reality or unreality of the corporate entities we have “established.” They are no more real than any other corporate entity, though we may feel that their existence as such is much more necessary and based on real human need. The human beings, or sangha, populating the corporate shell are real and existent dharmas, in its connotation of “dharma-beings.” The corporation is real enough, in that it can interact with other corporate entities, but is essentially a real but non-existent dharma being, a construct.

In spite of the “Citizens United” ruling of the Supreme Court, corporations are demonstrably not persons and should not have the “rights” accorded to human beings, in my humble opinion. All beings are capable of doing harm; corporate entities may survive their human components and thus become capable of extending the harm, or good, they do to future generations. Real persons, fortunately or unfortunately — your call — pass away eventually, but the harm they do often lives after them; thank you, Marc Antony. Sometimes through the corporations they formed during their lifetime.

There is a rather useful trope to apply to your personal relationship to the corporate entity that represents the community of fellow practitioners of Zen. These are some issues that have come up from time to time, phrased in the format of “IF-THEN”:

IF you find yourself obsessing over the wellbeing of the ASZC or STO, or your local affiliate center, including the management and succession of their leadership, THEN you may be getting distracted from your own, personal practice, which may be much more difficult to deal with, and less gratifying than engaging the social fray.

IF you feel under-appreciated for your efforts on behalf of the organization, THEN a couple of reminders: One — welcome to the club. Two — remember that we support the organizations because they support the practice of Zen. And in Zen there is “no self, and no other-than-self.” Our actions are neither entirely selfish, nor entirely unselfish, when it comes to Zen. Or you could argue that they are both selfish and unselfish.

IF you are engaging in certain activities, and feel that you are making sacrifices, for the sake of someone else in the sangha, including myself, THEN, please stop. A sense of emotional indebtedness will only grow, and can never be recompensed adequately.

As Master Dogen reminds us, we should not imagine that we are practicing Zen solely for our own sake, let alone for the sake of others. We should practice Zen for the sake of Buddhism itself. The 13th Century Master cautioned his followers not to call it “Zen,” that Zen is a made-up term. It is only Buddhism, he said. But even his nomenclature reifies “Buddhism,” as if there actually is such a thing that needs our protection.

Buddhism, like Zen, is also a made-up term. Shakyamuni was not a Buddhist, any more than Jesus Christ was a Christian. Buddha comes from a root word that means “awake.” Buddha means the “fully awakened one.” What he taught, and what his followers practiced — in a culture replete with Hinduism, where one imagines they encountered considerable resistance — came to be called Buddhism. As such, it is also subject to its own teachings of “impermanence, insubstantiality, and imperfection.”

IF you find yourself sharing your personal doubts and frustrations with your fellow travelers as to how the sangha is functioning, including its leadership, THEN you may be fomenting confusion, and resultant disharmony, in the sangha, a big “no-no” in Zen.

As the story goes, one of Siddhartha Gautama’s cohort of cousins, named Devadatta, was jealous of Shakyamuni’s revered status, including the lavish support he received from patrons, and repeatedly attempted to have Buddha assassinated. Yet Buddha predicted that Devadatta would eventually realize buddha-hood. If such transgressions

against the cohesion of the corporate Order of monks and nuns in those times could be regarded by Buddha as a kind of trial-and-error, coming of age saga, if over several lifetimes — we may be forgiven for the more minor errors in judgment that we may reasonably be expected to make in our efforts at community practice, and any resultant behaviors that may have unintended consequences.

In any case, it does not pay to overthink these considerations, certainly not to make them the focus of our personal practice. A monk complained that when sitting in zazen, the rain was dripping on him from leaks in the roof. The Master told him to “move down.” Why spend a lot of time patching and repairing an old temple building, when you should be about the business of your own awakening to Buddha’s insight? It is even more likely today that we will become enamored of the corporate entity and all its trappings, and lose sight of what brought us to Zen in the first place. The only thing that will accompany us when we go to our grave is our deeds. We have to leave the chimera of the corporation, along with the walls of the building, no matter how grandiose, behind — as well as the paperwork, thankfully. This realization should be accompanied by an immense sense of relief.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the next two segments: number 132 and 133 in the sequence, we repeat a subject that we took up in number 113 and 114; namely the buddha nature versus human nature; some of the sameness and differences between what we refer to as “human nature” and what we refer to in Zen as our “original nature,” or “buddha-nature,” “buddha” meaning “awakened one.” Please bear with the repetition; there is new material here as well. And much of what is to be said about the place of Zen in America bears repetition.

We often hear our fellow human beings idealizing human nature, implicit in criticisms of the behavior of others as “inhumane.” Which we may take to be well-intentioned, if somewhat self-aggrandizing. It implies that if only other humans around the globe were more “humane” in their treatment of others, we would see less suffering and atrocities stemming from humankind’s inhumanity to humankind, let alone the unspeakable miseries visited upon other, so-called “lower” sentient beings.

But I am afraid that our teachings from Buddhism cast a rather jaundiced eye on the veracity that idea. While, according to Zen tradition, we human beings are uniquely capable of waking up to buddha-nature, it does not follow that human- and buddha-nature are interchangeable. Far from it. Let us examine a few examples of what is conventionally meant by “human nature,” and some caveats to common attitudes and definitions, each claim followed by a “but”: 

It is human nature to regard ourselves as independently existent entities.

BUT: According to Zen, we human beings are not self-existent entities. Nothing else is, either. Including corporate entities, such as the Atlanta Soto Zen Center, the Silent Thunder Order, even the government. This is the flip-side of the internet of connectivity in which we find ourselves enmeshed. Entities function only by dint of their connections.

It is human nature to want to join like-minded groups of people.

BUT: The Zen community, or “sangha,” like any group entity, is evanescent, imperfect, impermanent, and intrinsically insubstantial. This is why we refer to and visualize our members as being like the drops of water vapor in a “cloud” (J. un), constantly evaporating and recondensing over time, as people come and go.

It is human nature to hope to be appreciated for our contributions to a group, or cause.

BUT: It is somewhat inappropriate to express appreciation to anyone for what they do for Zen or Buddhism, as there is no “self,” as such, in it. It is normal to do so in polite society, of course. But Zen, while not antisocial in character, is asocial — conventional norms and memes of society are called into question, and subject to examination under the unrelenting glare of meditation.

It is human nature to expect that our social cohorts will fulfill our personal needs.

BUT: Our best laid plans often take a dystopian turn. Because a corporate entity is populated by individuals who have their own agendas, one’s personal perspective may have to be set aside in deference to the overall, long-term benefit of the group. We are encouraged to practice patience (S. kshanti) with this as a social dimension of the Precepts.

It is human nature to hope that our favored institutions will continue in perpetuity.

BUT: Nothing continues in perpetuity. Never has, never will. Eiheiji still stands, however, as a testament to what it once represented, which of course has changed over time.

It is human nature to feel disappointed when our expectations are not met.

BUT: We practice caution against developing unrealistic expectations of Zen, both of our personal practice as well as our social community. We go to Zen with the sangha we have, not with the sangha we may want.   

I could go on. It is human nature to try to control the uncontrollable. And to blame others when we fail to do so. As the Tao te Ching reminds, paraphrasing, “When the blaming begins, there is no end to the blame.” Today we dismiss this as the “blame game.”

No matter how much harmony we are able to foster within the sangha, there are inevitably going to be periods of disruption and disharmony, triggered by personality issues, as well as external influences. We “do not discuss the faults of others,” but we often find it necessary to discuss their behavior from time to time, especially if it is disruptive.

THIS IS WHY WE ASPIRE TO BUDDHA NATURE

While exhorting others to remember and respect their humanity and encouraging humane behavior may be a natural, if unexamined, response to violations of injustice and offenses to our sensibilities witnessed on a daily basis, it ignores the fact that the great preponderance of the history of humankind consists mainly of these kinds of atrocities, committed under the umbrella of religious, ideological and political rationales. They represent the essence of what it is to be “human,” writ large, just as self-defense or self-preservation explains the great bulk of instinctive behaviors in the animal kingdom. Something is lacking, therein. We think it is our original, or “buddha,” nature. 

Buddha nature simply means awakened nature. What we awaken to is, largely, the unreality of those things we take to be real, which cause us to react defensively to any perceived threat to our self-identity. As the great Ch’an master Sengcan reminds us, in his poem on trusting the mind:

 For the unified mind in accord with the way, all self-centered striving ceases

HUMAN BEING VS CORPORATE ENTITY

This self-striving extends to corporate entities, prototypes of which were surely present in ancient China, as well as India and Japan. But today they seem to have taken on a life of their own, as an unintended consequence, characteristic of so many of our inventions. One model for taking an overview of this process we owe to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

If you search key words: “Hegel’s dialectic; synthesis of form,” the first item out of about 380,000 summarizes his concept as well as I can:

Hegel presents the dialectic as a three-part structure consisting of a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthesis. In human history, when the status quo (the thesis) is challenged by a new historical development or force (the antithesis), a new form of life emerges out of the synthesis of the two prior stages.

We might quibble with certain choices of terms, such as “a new form of life,” as this would be more appropriate when considering biological evolution, rather than social or cultural evolution, the latter of which I take to be what Hegel was talking about. Those entities that appear on the social/cultural horizon as forms of government, commerce, et cetera as the “antithesis” challenging prevalent norms, the “thesis,” which then react in survival mode, often taking on characteristics of the challengers, resulting in “synthesis,” the result of which becomes the new “thesis.” The process is ongoing and continuous. 

An example of another binary subject to this process, and similar to comparison and contrast of human versus buddha nature, is that of the corporate entity versus the individual, which — while occurring in human history predating and including Buddha’s time — was not so prevalent or obvious a contradiction as it is in the era of the relatively recent “Citizens United” decision of the SCOTUS.  

Today, corporate entities seem to be winning the competition for survival, or dominance, on a global scale. They appear to threaten the very meaning of the “individual,” those mere human entities that they are ostensibly created to serve.

In the next segment of UnMind we will continue this examination of the origin of social, or “corporate” expressions of human and buddha nature, with a focus on those growing out of Zen practice. Corporate entities such as the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and the Silent Thunder Order are familiar and salient examples of group dynamics intended to foster the individual pursuit of Zen practice. A real modern Zen koan. Stay tuned.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

The Noble Eightfold Path, the fourth of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, amounts to a prescription for practice, an octet of dimensions of daily life to pay strict attention to, in order to bring about Right View and Right Understanding, the dyad which, in combination, comprise Buddha’s idea of Right Wisdom. Right, or correct, wisdom in daily life will come about naturally through the daily observation and practice of Right Conduct: right speech, action, and livelihood; along with Right Discipline: right effort, mindfulness and meditation.

Needless to say, but I will say it anyway, in Zen, it all starts and ends with right meditation, opposed, we may suppose, to “wrong” meditation. And in truth, there are styles of meditation, and attitudes about it, that would be considered wrong, in the sense that they do not work well, or at least not as well as zazen, with its modus operandi of objectlessness. Such approaches as bompu Zen: meditating for health and happiness, wellbeing, i.e. ordinary goals and objectives of living; or gedo Zen: a practice that disregards the Buddhist underpinnings of Zen meditation, with its emphasis on transcending the self in order to penetrate to the depths of reality, in favor of some other framework such as Taoism or Confucianism from the original context in China, or a religious attitude of spiritual transcendence of ordinary life.     

So even within the personal practice of meditation itself, there can be competing ideas that lead to confusion. More so when we consider the cultural context in which we are practicing Zen. Nowadays we might want to add more dimensions to the original eight attributed to Buddha’s prescription for practice in a simpler time. Perhaps today we would end up with a Noble Thirty-two-fold Path as the last of the Sixteen Noble Truths.

One of the more explicit dimensions might be called “right balance,” indicating what I have termed “social samadhi.” Along with physical samadhi in the posture, which fosters emotional samadhi: less anxiety, more calm; mental samadhi: more clarity, less confusion; we begin to find more harmony, less friction, in our relationships.

 For Americans interested in pursuing a Zen practice, finding the right balance between the demands of household, work and family; and the necessary intensity of zazen practice may seem to be the most pressing and stressing dilemma in actualizing a Zen life in modern times.

We imagine that in simpler times, people had more time to spare, and could devote a greater share of their time to meditation and study. With all the touted time-saving devices of current technology, we still seem to have little or no time to ourselves. The current droll expression, “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get” captures this syndrome. An ancient version of the same idea, from the Chinese Zen poem Hsinshinming—Faith Mind, says it a bit differently, with specific relevance to Zen practice with a Taoist slant:

To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult

But those with limited views are fearful and irresolute

The faster they hurry the slower they go

This is a critique of those who approach Zen practice with limited views, as well as those who do not practice at all, and an admonition to practitioners to be fearless and resolute in pursuit of buddha-dharma. This general mindset underlies Right Effort, and gives a clue to how we may achieve balance in our practice.

Usually when someone brings this issue up, it indicates that they suspect that they may not be practicing with sufficient intensity. They worry that it is not possible to find the time for zazen, both at home and away, without compromising obligations to family and career. For every project or task in which we invest the present moment, there are a dozen others that go wanting.

The source of this dilemma is the tendency of the discriminating mind to compartmentalize, dividing life into separate categories. The next step in the process is to set the various pieces in opposition to each other. Then we conceive of them as taking time to plan, engage, and complete. Thus, we are forever caught in the bind of measured time, another compartmentalized conception. Taking this concept of time for the reality of time, we see no way out.

Time-and-motion gurus, along with efficiency experts as well as life coaches, apply various techniques to this problem, such as making it visible. One such approach recommends drawing up a pie chart, in which we give a portion of the whole to each of our regular activities, whether based on a 24-hour daily, or weekly, monthly, or annual, cycle. Then we examine the activities to see if they are out of balance in some obvious way, looking to reduce one to make room for another, to arrive at a more desirable allocation of time to our goals and objectives. In other words, we use measured time to re-plan a measured dedication time to tasks.

If we closely examine this process, and pay attention to the singular subjects that appear to conflict, it becomes apparent that the boundaries are not so clear. What we sort into categories are aspects of life that are more related than opposed. This is not a simplistic assertion that all is one, just an admission of the not-two nature of life promulgated in Zen teachings, particularly those from China.

If, for example, we imagine that time spent in zazen is time neglecting our family, we might remember that when we do not sit in zazen for some period, our relationship to our family begins to deteriorate. We may secretly, subliminally even, resent the fact that we have to give up something for the sake of our spouse, children, or parents  — or worst case, in-laws — with any lack of appreciation for our sacrifice on their part, adding insult to injury.

We cannot balance our relationships to others, when they are built on such underlying self-centered impulses to begin with. Our complaint that we do not have time to do zazen is a symptom that we do not understand either time, or zazen. When we do zazen, we are using our time to its utmost efficiency and efficacy. When we leave the cushion, this mindset goes with us. We eventually begin to find that we waste less time in futile pursuits, or in resentment and acrimony between ourselves and those making demands on our time.

This is especially true at work. A majority of people may report that they are happy with their work. But whether this happiness is genuine — or feigning contentment in fear of losing their job, or resistance to confronting genuine underlying unhappiness — is anyone’s guess. This was probably not included in the questionnaire. But most of our discomfort at work stems from relationships.

Compensation in terms of salary and benefits is always related to at least one other person, usually the identified “boss,” or management in general, especially where unions are involved. It is difficult to apply principles of compassionate engagement when the deck is stacked against us, with the other person holding all the trump cards. Often, we have no idea how much they themselves make for being our boss, but they know that — and more than we would like — about us.

Our subordinates present another set of interpersonal issues, where we find ourselves on the hot seat in terms of supervising their performance, dealing with personalities that can be difficult. We are uncomfortably aware of the interconnectedness of our role in the enterprise, particularly with those in close proximity. We also have to be mindful of the viewpoint of others higher in the chain of command, to whom our boss reports. And then, over time, these roles and relationships are as impermanent as any other elements in the Buddhist universe. As the old adage has it, “Be nice to the people you meet on the way up the ladder; they are the same people you will meet on the way down.”

Then there are client and supplier relationships outside the company; or students in the classroom; patients at the hospital. Patterns of relationships repeat, though the nature of the product or service varies. Sometimes disputes come out of left field, and we are blindsided with a conflict that begins to take up all of our time, including agonizing over it after work, over a drink. At the end of the day — so ubiquitous and overused a phrase that it is distasteful to repeat it — we begin to see home as a refuge from work. In some cases, work becomes a refuge from home. And the annual vacation becomes a refuge from both. Thus, our entire annual calendar is sucked into the relentless maw of time-consumption.

What if this is all just fantasy, simply the workings of our imagination? The monkey-mind is endlessly capable of playing such games. What about a real vacation, a time-out from this daily merry-go-round?

Zazen has been referred to as a mini-vacation, a brief respite from the rat race. One of the great secrets of Zen is that it really takes no time at all. In fact, Zen holds that we do not live in real time, unless we enter into it through zazen.

When we think of the entire scope of a project — such as writing the great American novel — we shrink back, in intimidation. The mountain seems insurmountable. But the mountain is climbed one step at a time, though we might prefer a helicopter. If we see a mountain as a series of molehills, it is not so daunting. The only question is, Which molehill is in front of us, at the moment?

If we think about all the other things that we do in a day, that take a half-hour or so, are there none that we could easily forego, for the sake of sitting for a half-hour? If not, how about fifteen minutes? Ten? Five? As Matsuoka Roshi would often say, “Sit five minutes: five-minute Buddha! Sit half-an-hour, Buddha for 30! But wouldn’t you rather be Buddha all day?”

By this, he did not mean sit zazen all day, needless to say. The effects of zazen are both immediate, and cumulative. They go with us, off the cushion. Our resistance to zazen is the molehill become mountain. I once consulted with a Canadian company named DYLEX. It is an acronym, meaning “Damn your lousy excuses!”This is a compassionate message for us. We don’t need no stinking excuses. 

Zen and zazen is very powerful on a personal level. But its halo-effect on our multifarious activities off the cushion operates on a subtle plane. It is better to assume that it is working to bring about personal samadhi on a subliminal level, rather than look for it to manifest in some obvious way. Often, one’s fellow workers and colleagues notice it before we do.

This is what Matsuoka Roshi referred to as “confidence in everyday life,” one of the side-effects of Zen practice. Everything is already in balance, if not obviously so. It may not be apparent to our associates, either. After all, they are only human beings, like us. And they may not have the benefit of a practice like Zen meditation. We can afford to be a bit more balanced in practicing patience with them, in the midst of our shared suffering. We have the balancing effect of Zen. Thank Buddha!

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Continuing with our discussion of various turning points in living the Zen life, we will examine the Buddhist tradition of “leaving home” to become a mendicant, with its unexamined but intrinsic root question of what, exactly, we mean by “home.”

The monastic ideal of “leaving home” is repeatedly praised by Master Dogen in the ordination ceremony known, in Japanese, as “Shukke Tokudo” — which translates as something like “leaving home, sharing the dharma.” In lay householder practice, we do not literally leave home, of course, other than for the occasional extended retreat, or sesshin. But we interpret the meaning as deeply significant, even to the householder. Our true home turns out to be unrelated to geography, or any of the other relative circumstances of existence.

We might also question the reality of home-leaving in the life of monastics, as Master Dogen mentions regarding monks of his time (see Shobogenzo Zuimonki). He suggests that some cannot really relinquish their attachment to family, and all that it entails, for the sake of Zen.  But it seems a near-prerequisite in order to “hear the true Dharma,” as he puts it in Dogen’s Vow (Eiheikosohotsuganmon).

Other monks, who are able to relinquish family and home, are not able to let go of their attachment to their body, and good health. They are not willing to put their life on the line, which is, after all, understandable. In this same poem, he quotes Ch’an Master Lungya: “In this life save the body; it is the fruit of many lives.” I take his point to be that an obsession with living a normal life as the scion of a family lineage, at the expense of Zen practice, is ultimately doomed to failure. As a famous analogy has it, family will not accompany you in death. Like other aspects of your life, including health and wellbeing, they will only go as far as the grave. Aging, sickness and death, the three major marks of existence, according to Buddhism, cannot be avoided in the long run. And Zen takes the long view.

But the third and most difficult level of monastic non-attachment pointed out by Dogen Zenji, is clinging to our own ideas and opinions, especially regarding all the above. Even monks who can realize the first two levels have difficulty with this last, unable to relinquish, or even to recognize, their erroneous worldview. The monk who can do this most difficult thing has the best chance of waking up during this lifetime.

Highest Level of Practice

This brings up an interesting point, a seeming contradiction, that Dogen does not go into. Achieving this last bit of letting go — of the “ties that bind” — implies letting go of our viewpoints. Including, most notably, those regarding the prior two levels — forgoing a normal lay life of family and friends, marriage, social status, and so on; and further, forsaking our attachment to our own health and, ultimately, our very life.

In other words, if we truly let go of all of our own opinions, this would necessarily include any preconceptions we harbor — such as that the most advanced monk or nun is necessarily detached from family and body. Not necessarily. In Zen, we give up our opinions of all such kinds of attachment. It is, after all, natural to be attached to both the body and our family; the distinction lies in the degree to which we are attached to them. This is the heart of the Middle Way.

A clear example of this principle is found in pain. We experience some pain in meditation. But we do not immediately react, doing something to make it stop right now. We sink into it a bit more than we usually would, going beyond our comfort zone. In doing so, we have an opportunity to truly experience the “pain” for what it really is.

Thus, we may discover that it is not so bad. Although even if we thought that the more extreme dictates of practice may turn out to be life-threatening, we should not shrink from it, according to Dogen. Nothing ventured, nothing gained on a scalable spectrum. Unless we are ale to set aside our preconception that pain = bad, we cannot learn from the experience. This principle then applies to all of our aversions to testy circumstances in life. Aversion is simply the flip side of attachment.   

Master Dogen’s assessment of the levels of commitment of various monks ends with the rare case of one who is able to sunder ties to family, health and life; and, finally, to one’s own worldview. This is the highest and truest form of liberation from the random, but seemingly determinative, causes and conditions of our present human birth. But since the last test entails relinquishment of our personal opinion of “all the above,” this should lead to the conclusion that the life of the lay householder is not all that distinct from that of the mendicant monk or nun, at least in any way that really matters in the context of the Great Matter. It is a case of the well-known “distinction without a difference.” If the circumstances of one’s lifestyle are only that — circumstance — then by definition, they are not central to living the Zen life.

Following on this reasoning, we might propose that the lay person — who is able to relinquish all such opinions, and “succeed to the wisdom of the buddhas” (see Fukanzazengi) — represents the highest possible level of realization. This may explain why it is, in the history of Buddhism and Zen, that such lay persons as Vimalakirti, Emperor Ashoka, Layman Pang, and countless others, are so admired. In spite of having their plates full, constrained by domestic and even governmental duties, they were able to gain profound insight into the Dharma, without renouncing their ordinary life. Not to mention certain monks who were known to flout the norms of monastic life.

Of course, you cannot tell the Zen book by its cover, so it is best to appraise only your own practice, and not to judge others, from outward appearances. 

 Contemporary Lay Practice

Contemporary lay practice in America is surely vastly different from what it was, and is, in the countries of origin, today as well as in ancient times. My limited understanding suggests that most lay householders practiced dana — generosity — by supporting the monks and nuns of the local orders with offerings of food and material support, including currency and other forms of fungible goods such as metals and fabrics. The community was apparently engaged in other, interactive ways as well. Young children would be sent to the temples and monasteries for training, which probably amounted to finishing schools, including some study of Buddhism. The early monasteries of the East probably evolved into the institutions of higher learning, universities, as they did in the Middle East and in the West, in Europe, for example. But the actual practice of Zen meditation, specifically, was probably not widespread, even in China and Japan. It was, and is, primarily the purview of the monastics

Today, however — I think perhaps especially in North and South America, as well as in Western Europe — lay practitioners generally equate Zen practice with meditation. Particularly in the USA, we tend to be do-it-yourselfers. We are not satisfied with second-hand information, and look to direct experience as having its own value, in most everything we do.

Thus, Zen training is closely related to apprentice modes of professional training, as in a craft or guild. A novice becomes an apprentice to a master; and eventually a journeyman; finally certified as a master herself. But we must be careful about this idea of becoming a “Zen Master.” We do not master Zen — Zen master us. But only if we allow it.

As Master Dogen reminds us in the Genjokoan excerpt from Bendowa, meaning “a talk about the Way,” the first fascicle from his master compilation, Shobogenzo:

When buddhas are truly buddhas

      they do not necessarily notice that they are buddhas.

If spiritual awakening is simply awakening to reality, it would not necessarily include taking on a new self-identity as a “buddha.” It might, however, include seeing oneself, as well as others, in a somewhat different light. “Your body and mind, as well as the body and mind of others, drop away” as Dogen assures us in the same teaching.

Living the Zen Life Today

While we may admire, and hope to emulate, the life of a monk or nun, I believe we in America do not have enough grounding in the reality of that choice, nor in the cultures of the countries of origin, in which Buddhism and Zen originally arose. The choices we have today, in terms of maintaining Zen practice in the midst of life, are surely very different from those of ancient India, for example. Joining the Order meant leaving behind the conventional trappings of society, including family name and caste position, wealth, and so on, though some of Buddha’s top disciples seem to have been his blood relatives.

The original Order at first included men only, but even during Buddha’s lifetime, it expanded to include women. From what I have gathered, any adult from any level of the caste system of the time could join, as long as they were willing to forego the privilege and provenance of their upbringing. This, it seems to me, had to do with renouncing the self, in the conventional sense.

This tradition is what Master Dogen, some 1300 years later, referred to as “leaving home,” in laudatory language. Today, we join the community, or Sangha — and can even become ordained as a priest — without literally leaving home in the obvious, outer sense of the phrase. However, when we undergo Shukke Tokudo, lay ordination as a novice priest, the implication is that we leave our ostensible home, in order to find our true home, in universal homelessness.

Our True Home: Homelessness

This homelessness is considered the original, or natural, way of being, and has nothing to do with where we were born, or where we currently dwell, in the geographic sense. Circumstances of our birth, as well as our growing up, our livelihood, and our eventual death, are just that: circumstantial. They are not central to our being, though they may play an inordinate role in shaping our worldview; and, indeed, whether or not we are ever even exposed to the Dharma.

This human birth is considered rare in Buddhism, though with nine billion and counting (when I originally wrote this, it was seven billion), it may appear to be so common as to threaten the very survival of the species. By comparison to other life forms, such as insects, we are not even close to predominance on the planet, as measured in biomass. But the disproportionate effect that we as human beings have on the environment amounts to a crisis. We may want to broaden our scope from considerations of our own, personal mortality, to embrace the possibility of extinction of the entire species. There is no greater form of homelessness than to become extinct.

ASZC & STO as Collaborative Community        

Each month, during our Second Sunday Sangha lunch and dialog at ASZC, we discuss issues of how we as individuals can join in the efforts of promoting true community, without compromising our own personal lives as householders and lay Zen people. Matsuoka Roshi predicted, and I concur, that the rebirth of Zen would be seen in America, and that its propagation would be primarily in the form of lay householder practice. He would often remark that “Zen is always contemporary.” That is, we don’t have to try too hard to make it contemporary.

We have just passed the sixth year anniversary of what might be considered one of the all-time great failures of community, that seen in Charlottesville, Virginia. It recalled to mind the greatest international example of decline of community in Germany, Italy, and later, Japan, which led to WWII. But Charlottesville is only a blip on the screen  of the ongoing series of catastrophes, both natural and human, that have plagued the human community since the beginning of recorded history. The latest being the hell on Earth that is Ukraine, courtesy of the Putin regime in Russia. Any serious student of history is not at all surprised by the daily atrocities that we witness on the news. This is human nature in full flower. It is why we aspire to buddha-nature, instead.

Now we are in the throes of adolescence, in the growth of the Zen community in America. That there is a lot of confusion wreaked upon this process is to be expected, owing both to quirks of contemporary Western society, and the persistence of myths surrounding the origins of Zen practice in the seminal communities in India, China, Korea, Japan, and the far East. Most of the confusion arises, I think, from the supposed contrasts and apparent contradictions between traditional monastic, and contemporary lay householder, lifestyles.

So, as if we need one more thing to worry about, we do not want to become attached to the propagation of Zen as yet another preconceived project in its own right. We are privileged to be exposed to the Dharma, in the most humble sense of the term, and not merely by dint of circumstances of our birth, the source of most social privilege. Let us not miss this opportunity to join with the Zen community, and to serve its members in true collaboration. It is well within our enlightened self-interest to do so.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

In the last segment of UnMind, we touched on the typically fraught turning points in normal life of changing jobs, going through divorce, and becoming empty-nesters when and if the kids finally move out. And if they don’t move back in again. They say you should write what you know, so I am living up to that dictum.

In this installment we will touch on the traditional “marks” of dukkha: sickness, aging and death, and then turn to the subject of turning points in zazen itself. It is important that as we experience these pivot points in our practice, that we resist the temptation to interpret them negatively, as evidence of failure, and that we persist through thick and thin, assuming and accepting that we are no more in control of the progress of our meditation than we are in control of the pilgrim’s progress of our lives. Zen, and zazen, work on subtle and subliminal levels, beyond our control. We should take the advice of the third patriarch in China, and “trust in Mind.” In closing the last passage, we mentioned that the various time-of-life changes that we all go through, if we live long enough, are generally exploited in the service of selling ever-more narrow-niche categories of products and services, including ever-increasing scams inflicted on the unwary.

Sickness & Drugs

If you still watch the news on television, you belong to an ever-shrinking segment of the population, and can see this process in extreme. Commercials hawking every kind of cure for every imaginable disorder of body and mind, some truly unimaginable. The firehose of drugs coming out of Big Pharma’s pipeline is overwhelming, ostensibly to treat an ever-expanding cascade of illnesses of the aged and infirm, who are typically shown in highly affluent situations, joyfully engaging in cool, strenuous activities in luxurious settings. Each new wonder drug comes with an endless list of side-effects that make the cure sound worse than the illness. It leaves me wondering what they are going to do, when they finally run out of names for the next generation of cure-alls. Expect to see companion drugs designed to treat the endless litany of side-effects.

According to a Zen student who works in the industry, and who just happens to be a PhD neuroscientist, most of the new drugs are actually old drugs, in which a single atom of the molecule may have been tweaked, yielding the minimum legal requirement for calling it new. So much for claims of return on investment for multi-million dollar research. 

Aging & Death

Speaking of aging, most of the turning-points that we associate with time-of-life — and other transitions in the normal process of “living la vida loca” — are basically attributable to aging. If we did not age, many of these passages would be impossible. Or at least, more of a choice on our part.

Death may be the penultimate turning-point in aging. That’s right, not the ultimate, but next to it. There is yet another, final turning point, even after death. It is called rebirth. Or its earlier version, reincarnation. In any case, something comes after death.  

As with divorce, it is tempting to say that if you are against death, don’t get born in the first place. Birth is, after all, the leading cause of death. Birth is, we might say, an indeterminate turning-point. What comes after birth depends upon you.

In one of the most startling developments regarding cultural coping strategies for these turning-points, I recently came across a news article entitled “Putting the fun in funerals.” I am not making this up. Because you can’t make this stuff up.

In his teaching titled Genjokoan, which translates something like, “actualizing the fundamental point,” and which seems to touch on nearly everything in life, Master Dogen weighs in on the nature of birth and death, in the process refuting reincarnation:

Just as firewood does not return to firewood after it is ash

      you do not return to birth after death

This being so, it is an established way in buddha-dharma

      to deny that birth turns into death

Accordingly birth is understood as no-birth

It is an unshakeable teaching in Buddha’s discourse

      that death does not turn into birth

Accordingly death is understood as no-death

Birth is an expression complete this moment

Death is an expression complete this moment

Then, with his usual default to concrete examples from the world of Nature:

They are like winter and spring

You do not call winter the beginning of spring

Nor summer the end of spring

Thank you Dogen, for clearing that up. I don’t pretend to understand this fully, but then Master Dogen himself does not claim to understand it. He merely lays it out as it is, take it or leave it. Interesting to contemplate that birth does not turn into death: Hallelujah! But wait a minute; death also does not turn into birth. What does that do to our aforementioned concept of rebirth? 

As usual for vintage Dogen, after he bludgeons us with an uncomfortable truth, he turns to Nature to soften the blow. Some of us, however, would petulantly argue that winter is, indeed, the beginning of spring, and summer its end. The monkey mind is stubborn in all seasons.

I find it a particularly compelling expression of Dogen’s understanding that he refers to both birth and death as “an expression complete this moment.” It begs the question, “An expression of what?” An expression of lifewould seem the logical answer, but Master Dogen’s worldview does not depend upon simple logic.

Turning Points in Zen Meditation

Speaking of Dogen, we owe him — big-time — for the point when each of us turned to Zen. If he had not made zazen his cause célébre, we would probably still be smudging ourselves with smoke, engaging in Shamanistic shenanigans, hoping for some kind of revelation.

The turning points in zazen are too many to catalog. The Ox-herding Pictures touch on eight or ten of the main ones. I want to mention just a couple that come up frequently. I recognize that you, like me, are not 100% responsible for your short attention span, or your attenuated threshold of patience. Especially if you are in the midst of a turning-point of your own, at the moment.

First is comfort-level.  

To those of you struggling with a critical turning-point in your life — or just the aches and pains, not to mention anxiety, confusion, and generalized angst that can sometimes accompany zazen, and not only at the beginning — it may be cold comfort, but zazen is supposed to be the “comfortable way.” I think the most reasonable rationale for this assertion is that any and every other way of meditation you may take up is at least as uncomfortable, in the long run, at least.

It has been my experience, and is my testimony, that there is a turning-point in zazen that comes about, when the posture does actually become comfortable. I can also assure you that it becomes comfortable not only in the physical sense, but that the nattering nabob of the monkey mind finally wears itself out, like a kitten or a puppy dog, and lies down to take a nap. Mental and emotional comfort ensue. Of course, your results may vary, especially with any significant change in your circumstances. That pesky turning-point, again.

Eventually, you may even become socially comfortable with zazen. That is, even though your spouse and other family members may not practice Zen, or even bother to understand it; and even though your in-laws insist on making a wedge issue of your devotion to Zen, this is okay with you. You no longer feel the need to explain, let alone to apologize, for doing zazen.

Of course, this turning-point may precipitate a turning-point in your relations to the others mentioned. But you may find that you are comfortable with that, too.

Another is the plateau effect.

After practicing for some time, even over many years, it may begin to dawn on you that it seems that nothing is happening in your meditation any more. Curiouser and curiouser, interesting things that used to pop up from time to time — in the form of creative ideas; resolution of a nagging problem; or cool sensation, vision, or hearing experiences — just aren’t happening. It seems clear that Zen isn’t working, or else you are not doing it right. You have flat-lined, plateaued.

Interestingly enough, Matsuoka Roshi mentioned this, and introduced me to a new Japanese word: cho-da. He said it means a “fall up.” You go along for some time, practicing your little heart out, but are getting nowhere. Nothing seems to be happening. Then, one day, if only you do not give up, you go through a cho-da. You fall up! It may be a small cho-da; it may be a large cho-da.

But, you fall up — to the next plateau. A plateau is, by definition, flat. So, once again, just when you thought it was getting good, nothing happening. The good news is you never go back. The bad news is that the plateaus just keep coming. No one knows how many there are.

Traditionally, there are said to be three major barriers in Zen. The first is physical, getting beyond your comfort zone to true comfort. The second is said to be sleep. Once you are cozy and comfortable in zazen, naturally, sleep would raise its ugly head. I have not heard what the third barrier is, but I suspect that it would involve some kind of plateau. Perhaps it is simply self-doubt. Matsuoka Roshi pointed out that by far the greatest cohort of Westerners who engage in Zen meditation are those who give up too soon.

So if you see yourself in any of these pictures, welcome to the club. If you are uncomfortable in zazen, welcome to that club. If you are plateauing, welcome to the flatliners club. Zen is the most exclusive club in the world. But it is all-inclusive. The only dues it demands of you is everything you have. But the payback is huge. What else can you do that will give you your whole life back? as Matsuoka-Roshi would often ask.

In the last several series of the UnMind podcast, we have been exploring some ways of intentionally bringing Zen practice to bear on various situations and circumstances of daily life in America. By extension these might apply anywhere on the globe today, where revolutionary changes in technology and exploding population growth have taken hold. Again, as Matsuoka Roshi would often say, “Civilization conquers us.” 

In navigating the deeper waters of Buddhism, this world — including so-called “civilization” — is sometimes referred to as the “Ocean of Samsara.” Samsara is likewise referred to as the “Saha world of Patience,” in that it tries our patience — unrelentingly, and on a daily basis. Just when things seem to be going swimmingly, “Someone is always coming along to take the joy out of life,” as Grandma Nelly would often say. “Saha” is defined on Wikipedia as:

It is the place where both good and evil manifests and where beings must exercise patience and endurance (kṣānti).

Buddha likened his Dharma teachings to a raft, one that we ride — read: “cling to for dear life!” — sailing across the ocean of Samsara to the “other shore,” Nirvana. There are various turning points in the process of navigating the roiling waters — some positive, some negative — as with everything else in life. Whether they appear as positive or negative is largely a matter of interpretation, of course. The famous Ox-Herding Pictures illustrate various turning points on the Path, generalized to fit most anyone’s journey into what I call “The Original Frontier,” the title of my first book on Zen. By the original frontier I mean to point to the frontier of mind, itself. This is the frontier that Shakyamuni Buddha discovered, and entered, some 2500 years ago. It beckons to us still, today.

      Perhaps the first turning-point in the process of spiritual awakening precedes discovering the hoof-prints of the ox, the first of the ten illustrations. These marks are sometimes interpreted as indicating one’s first inkling of the existence of the teaching, or buddha-dharma. The hoofprints resemble brush strokes, the obvious analogy being to the written record, which consisted of scrolls of painted calligraphy in ink in those times. Translation into today’s printed book format comprises the medium by which most of us first stumble across buddha-dharma.

      However, something else — a prior turning-point— has to precede this event. In order to begin the quest for enlightenment, one has to feel that something is missing in their life. Otherwise, why would you even be looking? Master Dogen touches on this in his tract called Genjokoan (“actualizing the fundamental point”):

When you first seek dharma

      you imagine that you are far away from its environs

But dharma is already correctly transmitted

      you are immediately your original self

We are blithely skipping along with our everyday life, fat and happy, when one day it occurs to us: Is that all there is? “What’s it all about, Alfie?” However normal our circumstances may seem at the time, and however rich and full our life may appear, there seems to be something that is not quite right, something missing. Matsuoka Roshi emphasized this as the source of our anxiety, uncertainty, and the very unsatisfactoriness of Buddhism’s definition of dukkha, or suffering. Everyone feels this dis-ease, and some eventually come to Zen, to find what is missing.

      Other turning points in life can precipitate a crisis of confidence, one which drives us to Zen in the first place, or makes us question whether Zen is really right for us. Or whether it works at all, for anyone. Let’s take a brief look at a few of the more obvious turning-points that come up with some frequency in life. These are FAQs brought up in private interview (J. dokusan) or practice discussion, from time to time. Perhaps you may see yourself in one of these pictures.

Changing Jobs

One of the most stressful turning-points that many people face today, and with ever-increasing frequency, is the need to change jobs. This may come about through a personal decision, or one made by one’s employer. Or one’s partner may receive an offer they cannot refuse, but it requires moving to another part of the world. In any case, the resultant demand for engaging in a job search, interviewing, and starting the new job, can be fraught and disruptive.

      Some worry that they can not afford to continue their Zen practice during the transition, either from considerations of availability of time, or from a financial perspective, or both, as a supporting member of the Zen community. These judgments may not be true, or fully thought through, but the pressure feels very real at the time.

      Zen practice — at home, or in a community — should not really be considered as necessitating an expense of either time or money, certainly not an expensive proposition. Zen is about the middle way between extremes, all about finding and maintaining balance in all things. In this sense, Zen is free. And portable.

      When going through a job change, or any other stressful turning-point, you may need Zen meditation more than ever. It will help you to make the right choices and decisions, if you allow it. When you get back on your feet, and find yourself in a more stable position — financially and otherwise — there will be plenty of time and wherewithal to support your sangha, and your teacher. You really cannot afford not to continue practicing Zen, and even more so when you are in dire straits.

      “Zen will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no Zen.” (With apologies to the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.)

Divorce

Divorce, along with its true antecedents — unrequited love, unfaithfulness, or irreconcilable differences — is an even bigger bugaboo in today’s society than losing your job. Though you might not think so, based on the treatment of divorce in pop media. It is often the theme of comedy; the butt of alimony jokes; a target of shadenfreude; and, in some recently publicized cases, even celebrated — with ceremonies akin to a wedding. Divorce often accompanies, or triggers, a change in employment and residential status as well. They say “bad things come in threes.” 

      It is tempting to suggest that, if you are against divorce, just don’t get married in the first place. This may sound less crass, and may make more sense, in the context of the life of monastics. But we do not pretend to be Zen monks or nuns. They surely have their critical turning-points as well. Householders may just have a lot more of them on a daily basis, especially given the complex society of today.

      I have been divorced once in my short life, and it is no fun. But the situation that led to the divorce was no bed of roses, either. Whatever the circumstances, divorce is definitely a turning-point. Whether it is “for better or worse” (a resonance on the wedding vows), it is, again, your call. If both sides are better off afterwards — as Buddha is said to have said about a “just war” — it may be considered a just divorce. Of course, there are always more than two sides to the dispute. Children often end up as pawns in the game, suffering even more short-term pain and long-term consequences than their parents do. Zen meditation is not a panacea, but can help to adjust to the new reality, even in these dire straits.

Empty Nesters

Speaking of parenting, there comes a time-of-life phase called “empty-nester,” at which point the rugrats are finally, and permanently (or so we hope) kicked out of the nest. Sometimes divorce follows on the heels of this exodus, and not coincidentally. The parents may keep the failed marriage together long past its shelf life, “for the sake of the children.” They may have decided to have children to “save the marriage” in the first place.

      In the context of professional market research, based on sociology, I suppose, there are various such “time-of-life” categories, tracing the normal flow of maturation, through biological and culturally-determined changes, from womb to tomb. Like most other models from the soft sciences, these are employed mainly to structure the marketing of goods and services.

      In the next episode of UnMind we will continue looking at turning points in our life, and how our practice of Zen meditation may help ease the transitions, and mitigate the sense of loss, as we move through the inevitable phases of “time-of-life.” As we witness the evolution of our own life, the evidence of the centrality of the teachings of Buddhism and Zen becomes ever more apparent, and not at all as pessimistic as they may have first appeared to us. The inevitability of aging, sickness and death, interpreted as negative developments in life, is accompanied by an increasing appreciation of their meaning and significance, and the importance of what we do with the opportunity. The good fortune of having been exposed to the Dharma and thereby being enabled to practice Zen and zazen in the context of the passing of time, is the real treasure of the Three Treasures. Please continue in your pursuit of Zen, no matter what stage of life you may be in.  

Continuing with the drive-time focus from the last segment is in keeping with the current thrust of UnMind. Each segment consists of a dissertation on issues typical of the USA, and coping with the international scope of global citizenship. Such concerns as over-consumption and the cult of the individual, plus lingering hangovers from 19th- and 20th-century ideas regarding right speech, action and livelihood, the right conduct sided of the Noble Eightfold Path, recur throughout as themes. The halo effect of right meditation proves to be our saving grace, in meeting, and managing to maintain, a genuine Zen practice in the face of daily life in a chaotic world.

I would like to key off of one of our Paramitas, or “perfecting practices,” the very first one, concerning Dana, or generosity. I suggest that you might practice generosity with yourself while driving in traffic, which may strike you as an odd concept. But if you can be truly generous with yourself, it is much easier to be generous with others.

According to my limited understanding of classical Buddhism, and likely the proto-Hinduism that preceded Buddhism, karmic consequences of our actions may be positive, negative, and even neutral. But there will be consequences, regardless. The judgment call as to whether a consequence may be regarded as positive or negative is based upon human perception and desire. Certain consequences, and outcomes, we want to happen; others we want to avoid like the plague. Incidentally, The first Plague of history turns out to be an unintended consequence of human activity. It was reputedly transmitted by commuters traveling along the Silk Road, with a generous assist from our rat cousins, and their fleas.

Nowadays, the greatest threat of pandemics is the enormous scope of human travel by land, sea, and, especially, by air. Every human being is, for the first time in history, one plane ride away from every other human being on the planet.

That any karmic consequence may be neutral — rather than necessarily positive or negative — may be a new idea to you. As an instance: if we continue breathing for the next five minutes, we are more likely to continue living. If we stop breathing for the next five minutes, then we will likely die. Whether this is a positive or negative consequence is, again, a judgment call. In most cases, life is preferable to death; but there are exceptions to the rule, which has become more of an issue with the life-extending technology available in modern medicine. The relatively neutral consequence is simply that life goes on, as long as we are breathing. But it may be in a vegetative state.

From a general, social perspective, life going on, and increased longevity, is considered a positive consequence, considering the alternative. In that sense, we are all consumers of life. So, the more, the better. From the perspective of Buddhism, we might say that longevity is desirable mainly in that living longer allows us more time, more opportunity, to awaken to the truth. This spiritual awakening is the highest value in Buddhism and Zen. “Buddha” means the “fully awakened one.” A consequence of Buddha’s life’s work is that we all have now been enabled to become aware of this truth, or Dharma.

For example, dukkha, a Sanskrit word usually translated as “suffering,” points to the unsatisfactory nature of this existence, encapsulated as “aging, sickness, and death.” This is the quagmire into which all sentient beings are born, and find themselves enmeshed. The wealthiest person in the world cannot turn back the clock, despite the hopeful claims of the medical and therapeutic professions; the cosmetics industry; plastic surgeons, et cetera. We see caricatures of this aspiration on a daily basis, for instance when certain botox and facelift icons appear on television. Or we see snapshots of the passing pageantry of life in Los Angeles and Manhattan, where women, in particular, as well as men, well into their 50s, 60s and older, strive to age gracefully by maintaining the outer appearance of an ingénue, or a dashing heartthrob.

No amount of wealth can prevent some forms of illness, in the final stages of life. Particularly when one’s lifestyle itself amounts to a cocktail of causes that accelerate the deterioration of body and mind, such as over-eating, smoking, taking recreational and diet drugs, and drinking alcohol to excess. The lifestyles of the rich and famous are often notorious for this kind of self-destructive dissolution, if you believe the press, which tends to exaggerate.

Science fiction to the contrary, no amount of wealth can forestall forever the death of this body and mind, in spite of earnest life-extending efforts in geriatric medicine and cryogenics. The sometimes frantic activities surrounding preservation of life, as witnessed in the Terry Schiavo case, for example, betray a profound fear of death and dying. This fear naturally emerges as a fear of aging, the evidence provided by visible, gradual, long-term, symptoms we see in the mirror each day. Of course, we do what we can, but it is futile to postpone the inevitable. An old Chinese poem includes the line, “Save the body; it is the fruit of many lives.” But we cannot save it in the sense of preserving it forever. Other than as a mummy, which historically has been the fate of some Zen ancestors as well as Egyptian royalty.

We who follow Zen do not arrogantly dismiss such fears as baseless. Nor do we pretend that Zen practice will allow us to go quietly into that dark night, though Zen’s history is replete with stories of masters dying with great dignity and composure. Zen is not overly optimistic in this regard. It does not present a pollyannaish view of existence, promising a heavenly rose garden after death.

Nor is Zen overly pessimistic. We don’t bemoan the fact that this existence is, intrinsically, of the nature of suffering, or impermanence, imperfection, and insubstantiality. We don’t insist that the natural process of aging, sickness and death is necessarily a negative consequence of existence. It is simply a consequence of existence. And, thus, our physical fate falls into the neutral category of karmic consequences.

In this way, Zen is simply realistic about the causes and conditions that we all face in life. Its teachings do not suggest, pretend, or imagine that there could be some other outcome. In Zen, coming to this clarity regarding karma is regarded as a kind of spiritual maturity.

We can usefully regard these causes and conditions, the “givens” of the equations of life,  as natural koans, illogical riddles. Koans are not to be solved in the sense of finding a logical answer, as I get it. I understand that they are used as a central part of training in the Rinzai sect. In Soto Zen, we don’t make programmatic use of the 1700 or so classic koans in the record. But instead we recognize the reality in which we find ourselves, the very spacetime continuum — to borrow Einstein’s phrase — in which we are sitting at the moment, whether in the zendo or in the driver’s seat, as our immediate koan. This very reality “in front of your face” is the primordial koan. An ancient Chinese poem reminds us: 

Emptiness here, emptiness there

            but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes

“Emptiness” is used here to name the ideal of Buddhism and Zen: clarity of insight into the dynamic reality of existence. It does not indicate the “void” as the ultimate reality, set against our normal perception of everyday reality as being an illusion. This is not something we recommend obsessing over at full speed, or in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

But this infinite universe, standing always before our eyes, is the real koan, the koan of everyday existence. It is the meaning of everyday life that we have to penetrate, whether we realize it or not. There is no choice in the matter. Penetrating to the depths of it may result in realizing that “every day is a happy day; every day is a good day,” another old Zen expression. We should add “regardless” — regardless of circumstance, that is.

Most of our conventional cultural memes, as prescriptions for happiness — getting your go-to-hell-money; retiring to a life of travel and playing golf, and so on — can be seen, in this context, as avoidance techniques, evasive maneuvers. This kind of goal orientation amounts to a kind of self-indulgent cognitive therapy, in which we attempt to replace unpleasant thoughts — of failure, indebtedness, and so on — with pleasant ones. In which we attempt to conjure up a comfortable fantasy, in place of our dissatisfactory reality.

This is a natural tendency, and actively promoted by the culture, particularly in the West. So we should not beat ourselves up too badly over the fact that we have fallen for this societal scam. Most highly touted concepts of happiness are designed and intended as marketing devices to sell us products and services, as well as alternative lifestyles. Those that most closely match the archetypal American dream come with the highest price tag.    

But the choices we have are not limited to only those that we think we can afford, within an economic paradigm. Zen is sometimes considered not immoral, but amoral, because it recognizes that we have complete free will at all times, and in every particular situation. That is, as long as we are willing to face the consequences — whether negative, positive, neutral, and unintended — of whatever actions we take. 

For example, many people are out of work, looking for a job, or changing jobs. The world economy is forcing a re-evaluation of the definition of a “job” as paid employment provided by someone else. A job includes a place of work to which one goes every day, commuting to the office or factory; checking in or punching a time clock, under the watchful eye of management; and after putting in a sufficient effort for the day, returning to the comforts of home. These and other outdated cultural memes, customs and habits can affect our view of reality in subconscious, even insidious, ways.

But in our meditation practice, we are encouraged by Master Dogen — founder of Soto Zen in 13th century Japan, to stop the ordinary functions of the mind, setting aside all thoughts of good and evil, right or wrong. It is necessary to point out that this instruction, or advice, is intended to be followed mainly while we are on the cushion.

When we leave the cushion, and go into daily life — get into the car, and enter onto the expressway — we are constantly faced with choices of good and evil, right and wrong. We must make judgments regarding the behavior of others, which we cannot ignore beyond a certain point, as well as concerning our own behavior. Once again, in all of these instances, Zen is neither overly optimistic or overly pessimistic. It is simply realistic.

So this aspirational idea, that if we could somehow set aside all considerations of good and evil, right and wrong — that we can live blissfully unaware of all the obvious good and evil, right and wrong in the world and thus be happy — is tempered by the pragmatic nature of our Zen practice. Even when we sit on the cushion, we cannot completely avoid suffering, in the sense of the good and evil influences in our lives, and the right and wrong choices that we have made, and that we are forced to make, on a daily basis. The point is that it isour choice. And the consequences that flow naturally from the choice — from the action, or lack of action that we take — are also ours. Whether karmic or not.

Some old wise man said, “Through change, consume change.” Change is all there is. But we try to maintain status quo, out of fear of losing control. It is already out of our control.

As Ambrose Bierce pointed out in The Devil’s Dictionary, what we call an accident is, paraphrasing widely, actually the inevitable result of immutable physical law. So if you become distracted by this podcast, and run into the car in front of you, that so-called accident is the inevitable result of the immutable laws of physics, as well as of the choices you made that led to it. And, while you might have prevented it, if you did not prevent it, still, it was no accident. Your driving in traffic is no accident. Nor is listening to my podcast.

So be careful out there. If you consider that the driver of that vehicle that just recklessly cut in front of you may be someone you know and like, who is just under a lot more stress than you are at the moment, it may make it easier to respond to the situation in an appropriate manner, without adding the overlay of anger and condemnation that we reserve for strangers. It may also make you safer in the long run.

Once you are safely ensconced back on your cushion, you might remember what it was like when you were on the commute, and come to appreciate your zazen even more.

Continuing with our exploration of how to actualize a thoroughgoing Zen practice in the midst of life in the 21stCentury, we will take a closer look at one of the situations in which many of us find ourselves: the daily commute. Which would have been the furthest thing from the mind of Shakyamuni Buddha, or his descendants in India, China, and Japan — though the denizens of those areas of the globe are now fully immersed in the consequences of overpopulation and modern transportation, just as we are in America.

This segment of UnMind was originally part of an early effort to launch a podcast called  Drive-Time Zen, designed for drive-time on the expressway during the daily commute, or while traveling on highways and byways. Commuting to and from work too often results in stressful times spent in gridlock, especially in major metro areas such as Atlanta. Even driving to your favorite vacation spot can become an arduous chore. This phenomenon is a uniquely modern-day manifestation of suffering, not shared by the Founder and Ancestors of Zen. But it also presents a learning moment, an opportunity to remember and embrace the compassionate teachings of Buddhism.

Zen’s unique style of meditation, zazen, is central to success in this effort. Of course, driving in today’s high-speed conditions should not be considered an opportunity for meditation for obvious reasons, as intense meditation can alter perception. Altering perception at 60 or 80 miles per hour is not necessarily a good idea. But the cardinal aspects of Zen’s meditation — upright posture; deep, abdominal breathing; and above all, exercising your full, undivided attention — can be helpful while in the driver’s seat.

The conflation of stress, choice, and Zen outlines the three dimensions of the situation: the emotions that we feel; the source, and potential relief, of the stress; and the attitudes from Zen we bring to bear on the particular case of the commute. I ask you to consider a major contributor to the frustration and stress level we frequently feel while on the commute: we feel we have no choice in the matter.

From what we might call the liberated viewpoint of Zen — liberated from convention — the reality is that, ultimately, we indeed have no determinative choice in certain matters, such as aging, sickness, and dying. But that we have no choice concerning more trivial daily affairs — such as submitting to the commute — is largely a delusion. In all such instances, the truth is that we do have other choices. The real reason we do not entertain the possibility of doing something different, is our fear of the consequences, known or unintended, that may follow from our actions.

This goes to the concept of karma, from a root Sanskrit word kr, meaning “to do or make”; in other words, to take action. If we take action, any kind of action, karmic consequences are sure to follow. The theory is a bit like the more familiar formulation, “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” from Newton’s Laws of Motion. However, there is not necessarily anything equal, nor exactly opposite, about the consequences that follow from actions we take in daily life. This is what makes the theory of karma so slippery. It is not a simplistic concept of linear cause and effect.

Other consequences in life — such as having a good marriage, a good job, an easy commute to work, and so on — are certainly better than the alternative, and may be conducive to spiritual awakening, as well. But they are not central to our basic happiness. We consider such attributes of life as peripheral, if not mere circumstance, though the daily grind can come to dominate our lives. But for those who follow the Zen way, the issue of awakening to our innate buddha-nature is paramount, a central concern, even in the midst of busy modern life. And the fact that most of us do not experience this kind of spiritual insight is regarded as the true source of our suffering and misery. Traffic congestion only exacerbates it.

Thus, the complex of circumstances that finds you driving in traffic while listening to my podcast on your daily commute, is just that: circumstantial. It can not be central to your happiness, though you may blame your frustration and distress on the circumstances.

Naturally, when we are unhappy, or angry, we look to hold something, or someone — other than ourselves — accountable. We can imagine that if only we did not have to drive to work every day, we would be happy. We complain that the powers-that-be should do something to fix this bumper-to-bumper mess. Or if only our company — the management, our boss — would simply allow us to use flex-time, or work from home to avoid the commute, then we would be happy.

But when we take an unvarnished look in the rearview mirror, on the many experiences of our lifetime, we will likely see that, indeed, the circumstances of our life have constantly changed, and frequently. Such stabilizing aspects of life as our career; place of employment; and friends and family connections; have often changed quite radically. And yet, we may not have been any happier for it, once we had settled into our new set of circumstances. Once the change becomes our “new normal,” we have the time to find other reasons to be dissatisfied, within the circumstances of our new situation.

If we are honest with ourselves, over time we come to see this disparity clearly, and its insidious effects. Things that we feel are “wrong” with daily life are easy to point out. But when those things change, we are all too ready, even eager, to put something else in their place. Or the fact that something changed that we did not want to change, becomes the updated version of what is wrong with the world. If not with the world, then what is wrong in my little world, that keeps me from being happy. And thus prevents my enjoying a completely wholesome lifestyle, and finding a fulfilling existence.

As a generic placeholder, we tend to relate all of these issues to income; or primarily, our relative lack of income. If only we won the lottery. If only we had inherited wealth. If only we somehow got lucky and struck it rich. Then, we could be happy. Because then, we wouldn’t have to commute to work. We wouldn’t have to do anything that we didn’t really want to do.

While there is some truth to this, and it is understandable that everyone is looking to get their “go-to-hell-money,” as it is called in business circles, retiring to a lifetime of ease, luxury, travel, godawful golfing; the ideal circumstances of the “lifestyles of the rich and famous” that many admire and aspire to. We would have achieved what is generally consider “doing well,” or “success.” As a relevant aside, Taoism asks, with its usual, incisive subtlety: “Which is more destructive: success or failure?”

When we look at the actual lifestyles of the rich and famous, we begin to see a few cracks in the façade. This is not simply schadenfreude, or class envy. But from a Zen perspective, once we have all the money we need, other aggravations will dependably insert themselves into the niche formerly occupied by our pressing need to pay the bills.

All the circumstances of life, including driving in traffic congestion on the expressway — when subsumed into the larger context of fundamental causes and conditions of existence — can be seen as rather trivial, not so bad after all. If we find ourselves stuck in a traffic jam, whether commuting to and from work or not, this is, for the present moment, our koan. A koan is an illogical riddle — a conundrum — one that we are facing in the present moment, and attempting to penetrate the deeper meaning of it.

In fact, no one actually needs to commute to work, in any absolute sense. No one needs to be driving in the ever-increasing traffic nightmare on our expressways. But not many people are willing to face the consequences of refusing to do so. Without going into all of the other obvious options that you may have in your life (you know them better than anyone else), just consider the consequences. What would be the worst-case scenario, if you decided, tomorrow, that you were not going to do this anymore? Or what if you decided — right now — to quit? Pull off at the next exit, and go back home, text the boss or “call in well”? Tell your boss that you will not be coming in today, because you no longer need to. You are okay now. You have awakened from the nightmare.

And then, consider the range of consequences to follow. It would not be the end of the world. It might be the end of your world, as you know it now. But it would not be the end of the world.

The main point here is that when you tell yourself that you have no choice, you are lying to yourself. Zen recognizes that we always have a choice. We have the choice to do the right thing in the circumstance; we have the choice to do the wrong thing in the circumstance; and we have the choice to do what may turn out to be neither right nor wrong, but simply a necessary change. Which of necessity entails taking a risk.

It should offer some comfort, or relief, to realize, and accept, that you are caught in this present, unpleasant circumstance of the traffic jam because of choices you have made, and choices that you continue to make. What you may not realize is that you are absolutely free to do something completely different. That is, as long as you are willing to watch all those dominoes fall. If you are able to let go of all of the attachments that you have to the things that would change, in ways intended and unintended, owing to your change of choice, then you can do whatever you damn well please, as my dad often said of my mother. Recalling Johnny Paycheck’s hit, “Take this job and shove it!”

For the moment, however, you can postpone this fundamental decision, the liberating but terrifying recognition of the reality of choice, in the face of stress. There is no hurry. This decision will still be waiting there for you, when you return to it. As my grandma would say, “Don’t worry about finishing that work; it will still be there when you come back to it.”  You can rest comfortably in your car for now.

So please breathe deeply, sit up straight, and pay full attention. Some of the benefits of meditative practice can hitchhike along with you, driving to and from work or whatever other destinations to which the road takes you.

Hopefully, this discussion will have given you a broader context in which you can clearly see that this consequence — this koan in which you are sitting behind the wheel — is really of your own making, part and parcel of your life. It is a temporary consequence of a cascade of decisions you and others have made. It is not an accident.

When you have an opportunity, download the next UnMind, tune in next time. It is a choice you are making. Meanwhile, gassho, name of the Buddhist bow in Japanese. I am bowing to you, wishing you the best. May you be well, on or off the road.

ZEN AT WORK, AT HOME, AT PLAY

Following on the last segment of UnMind, this one is based on questions raised by the same member of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center community. She moved here from India, and later moved out of the Atlanta area. If you are interested having in a regular online dharma dialog with me, as she does, let me know. And If you have questions regarding the integration of everyday life with your Zen practice, please don’t hesitate to send them to me for future podcasts.

Last time, we considered some of the seeming contradictions with the compassionate teachings of Zen Buddhism that arise in the modern work space. This time we will look into some of the more personal aspects of our relationships, inside and outside of the formal Zen community, or Sangha

It seems to me that one of the submitted questions bridges all the various contexts of the social sphere of daily life, which refers back to my model of the Four Spheres of Influence that form the context of our practice, whether in ancient or modern times (see the illustration in the post):

3. [What does Zen have to say] on the nature of relationships?

This highly generalized question may appear too broad, at first glance. But this issue of relationships, and how we handle them, comes up repeatedly, in our daily lives. We all have multiple relationships that last for many years over our lifetimes, coming and going like the seasons. Others are daily interactions; some are infrequent, and many are once-in-a-lifetime occurrences. The most difficult tend to be with immediate family.

Someone said that the “dharma of marriage,” or something to that effect, is the most difficult of dharmas.  One might substitute “family” for “marriage.” Some might insist on using “in-laws” as the determinative term. But all would admit that the closer the bond, the more fraught with emotion, like the old song, “You always hurt the one you love.”

But Zen challenges the very notion of our definition of relationships, beginning with that of the self. This approach is inherently circular, studying the self with the self, itself. In Fukanzazengi—Principles of Seated Meditation, Master Dogen advises us to set aside all of our usual preoccupations with everyday concerns when entering into zazen:

For practicing Zen a quiet room is suitable; eat and drink moderately

Put aside all involvements and suspend all affairs

Do not think “good” or “bad” do not judge true or false

Give up the operations of mind intellect and consciousness

Stop measuring with thoughts ideas and views

Have no designs on becoming a buddha

That second line is also translated “Setting aside all delusive relationships.” Which begs the question, What relationship is not delusional, if any? Delusion is a central concern in Buddhism. Its seminal teachings question the evidence of our very senses, in the opening verses of the Heart of Great Wisdom Sutra:

[Given Emptiness] no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind

No seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, no thinking [until we come to]

No realm of sight [and all the rest; until we come to] no realm of mind-   consciousness

For those of you who attend our services and chant this sutra, you will not recognize the phrases “until we come to” or “and all the rest,” which have been deleted from the current consensus translation that we have adopted. They appear in the first English translation that Matsuoka Roshi approved at the Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago, my home temple. “And all the rest” stands in for repeating all the senses over again, and is inserted repeatedly as a kind of shorthand for making the original verses a bit briefer.

The other phrase, “until we come to” is more relevant to the overall meaning of the chant. It implies that the process of meditation — to which the Heart Sutra stands as a testament — entails a natural progress of segueing through deeper and deeper levels of apprehending “emptiness,” or shunyatta, in Sanskrit.

Beginning with our conscious awareness of form, feeling, thought, impulse, and consciousness itself; then expanding to the senses, one-by-one; then on to challenge our concepts of ignorance, including our attitudes toward old age and death. And finally, suffering itself, along with its cause and cessation; as well as the Path. Then, knowledge itself; and any idea of attainment that we may harbor. This section constitutes the most sweeping dismissal of all of our various dualistic concepts of Buddha’s teachings, along with our perception and conception of our own reality. Everything is called into question.

When it comes to the relationships between ourselves and others, it follows that as long as our apprehension of the self is delusional, then all relationships must be delusional. Only if and when we see through the self can we have an unbiased appreciation of relationships.

In this light, I ask you to consider what is the most singular aspect of any relationship that applies equally to all relationships, whether with intimates, family and friends, or inanimate objects, for that matter? In terms of people-to-people connections, most will offer something like “trust,” “love,” or “forgiveness,” et cetera. “Can’t we all just get along?” as the current trope has it. But Zen goes deeper, as Matsuoka Roshi would often say.

Remember that the three “marks,” or salient characteristics of suffering, Buddhism’s dukkha, are “impermanence, imperfection, and insubstantiality.” From this rather terse description, I would suggest that the first is the most salient aspect of any and all relationships: that they are impermanent, first and foremost. The good news is that a bad relationship is a temporary annoyance or worse; the bad news is that the good relationships are also fleeting.

That any relationship is guaranteed to be imperfect is common knowledge, though it does not prevent us from aspiring to perfection, especially in others, finding Mr. or Ms “right.” That they are insubstantial may be challenged as to the karmic consequences of, say, begetting children. That seems like a pretty substantial entanglement, and is probably the main rationale for the choice of most monastics to remain celibate.

Several of the other, related questions raised by our interlocutor would fall under this same examination in meditation. Such as, What does Zen have to say…

…on not deciding to marry? 

…on fertility, or having children, or raising family?

…on the nature of jealousy?

…on forgiveness?

…on victim mentality?

…on self harm?

I think we can see that these are all variations on the same theme, tied to the reification of the self, and in the absence of insight into dukkha and shunyatta. This is not to be dismissive of these concerns, or to make light of them, but only to say that you will most likely find the answers to such questions on the cushion, or as an aftereffect of sitting in meditation, and not in my words.

In zazen we examine the very nature, and question the very existence, of this so-called self, the source of so much of our suffering. It is not that the self does not exist. It is just that it may not exist in the way that we think it does, which is causing all the trouble.

This is not a doom-and-gloom conclusion to come to. Buddhism is not pessimistic, and not overly optimistic. It is just realistic. And Zen represents its most realistic application to real life. To return to the Heart Sutra, we find that it pivots to a more hopeful, sunny conclusion, after freeing ourselves from the snare of the small self:

With nothing to attain a bodhisattva relies on Prajna Paramita

and thus the mind is with-out hindrance with-out hindrance there is no fear

far beyond all inverted views one realizes nirvana

All buddhas of past present and future rely on Prajna Paramita

“Prajna paramita” means “perfecting of wisdom” in Sanskrit, an ongoing and open-ended process. There is “nothing to attain” because we already have everything we need. The mind is originally, and naturally, “without hindrance.” It does not depend on anything we do or do not do. Our true self is already complete and sufficient to itself. We do not, or should not, really need relationships, to be happy. This is not a self-centered idea, but should allow us to sustain real and healthy relationships. If all we bring to a relationship is personal need, then it is bound to distort that relationship. If we are “happy in our own skin,” we may have something to offer in all of our relationships.

At the risk of repeating myself, my model of how this works, or should work, posits four dimensions, or levels, of samadhi, a Sanskrit term that has become part of the jargon of Zen. We may regard it as a kind of centered balance in the midst of all things, including relationships. I think we can demystify it by thinking of the zazen meditation posture as the ultimate in “physical samadhi.” Sitting in this upright posture still enough, for long enough, we begin to experience “emotional samadhi”: more calmness, less anxiety. The prevalent monkey mind relaxes into “mental samadhi”: more clarity, less confusion, particularly regarding the teachings of Buddhism. We begin to directly experience what Zen is pointing at. And finally, the goal we want to achieve in relations, “social samadhi”: less friction, more harmony at work, at home, and at play. Your results may vary, of course.   

The “true self” is selflessness, “neither self nor other than self,” as the Ch’an poem has it. Just as our “true home” is homelessness. Whether you find that fact to be a cause for work, or play; for joy, or chagrin, is entirely up to you. “Examine it thoroughly in practice.”

This concludes my response to the questions under question. If you have more, I am open to considering them. You may find my email address on the ASZC website. I hope this has been useful, and encouraging to your practice.

Continuing with a consideration of the realities of day-to-day Zen practice in the context of Buddhism’s central teaching of dukkha – natural suffering writ large – the second of the “three marks,” or characteristics of existence from a human perspective, is usually named as “sickness” or “illness.”

Please note in passing that illness, from the perspective of Chinese medicine – which may be closer to its cultural connotations in ancient India – denotes a lack of centeredness, or balance. Something is out of kilter – the yinyang of it all – when we fall ill. Nowadays, of course, we have much more access to many means of tracing and tracking the origins of our maladies, to environmental and other sources.

Quoting from the Tricycle web site again, we find a less personal, less specific definition of the three:

...all phenomena...are marked by three characteristics...: impermanence (anicca), suffering or dissatisfaction (dukkha), and not-self (anatta). These three marks apply to all conditioned things—that is, everything except for nirvana.

Sickness is not called out specifically as one of the many causes of suffering or dissatisfaction, possibly for reasons of cultural context and medical acumen 2500 years ago. We will get around to that throwaway line exempting so-called “nirvana.”

I can personally testify to the dissatisfactory and suffering nature of sickness, from my experience contracting Covid-19 in 2022 and, more recently, a suddenly bloated GI tract blockage that had me hospitalized overnight, and bed-ridden for over a week.

The pandemic occasioned such wide medical suffering and social unrest that Shunei Oniuda, the president of Sotoshu Shumucho, Zen administrative headquarters in Japan, addressed it from the Buddhist perspective in a public message:

I would like to extend my heartfelt condolences for those who have lost their precious lives from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and offer a prayer that they may rest in peace. For those who have been affected by this illness, I pray that they will recover as soon as possible, and I would like to offer my deepest sympathy to their families and relatives who have also been affected by this illness. Also, my thoughts are with all those experiencing tremendous difficulties whose lives have been affected by the spread of this epidemic and the need to stay home.

Then Mr. Oniuda relates some interesting facts providing context for the present:

In the Kamakura Period of Japanese history when Dogen Zenji was teaching, there were times when cool summers caused by climate change often brought poor harvests. There were outbreaks of plague, and, during the Great Kanki Famine (1230-31), it is said that about a third of the population of Japan perished. In times such as these, Dogen Zenji emphasized that these were the very times to not neglect the Buddha Way.

Who is to know it the changes in climate at that time were as precipitous and global as those we are seeing today. As an island nation, Japan is likely more subject to extremes in weather because it is surrounded by ocean waters. A caveat – in our fraught divisive times, it may be necessary to point out that this recollection of similar disasters from the history of Zen – though on a much smaller-scale – is surely not intended to support either side of the ideological argument. Instead, it reinforces the premise that Zen is a practice fully prepared to meet, head-on, the vagaries of life, whether of natural, man-made, or a combination of those causes and conditions.

Note that he offers condolences to those who died first, rather than to the survivors; which is characteristic of Zen funerals. The sermon is actually directed to the deceased.

While emphasizing the need for disseminating accurate information, and recommending that all concerned follow the practical recommendations for exercising due diligence in preventing the spread of infection, President Oniuda refers back to the compassionate teachings of Zen’s founders, as they apply to this current, international crisis:

It is in such a time that the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, Dogen Zenji, and Keizan Zenji are necessary. Shakyamuni Buddha taught right view, right speech, and right practice in the face of the sufferings of sickness and death.

Right view, speech and practice – conduct exhibited in crises – do not follow the mob:

Even if people are agitated or anxious in the confusion caused by others who are fearful and buy up or hoard food and other goods, let us act calmly. Let us act in accordance with the spirit of Dogen Zenji’s teaching of the intention of first saving others before ourselves and in accordance with the Bodhisattva’s Four Embracing Actions. This is to naturally practice the way of benefitting others.

Compare to the panic mode triggered by the pandemic in most circles of the population. Then the President’s message brings it home, uniting both social and personal spheres:

Also, Keizan Zenji taught that we should have compassion and love for all things, that we should sympathize with others’ sufferings as if they are our own, and that with the mind of compassion we should be diligent in the practice of zazen. I encourage you to endeavor to practice zazen during this time that we must spend quietly at home.[1]

So the prescription for practice in Zen remains the same in good times or bad, whether we find ourselves in truly dire straits, or operating under relatively ordinary pressures of meeting the daily needs of ourselves and the community: Hie thee thither – back to the cushion. His message is directed not just to monastics but to householders as well. And by no means is zazen prescribed as an escape from the wolves howling at the gate, but the most direct and efficacious way to meet them where they are coming from.

Matsuoka-roshi would sometimes say, “If you get sick, you just get sick; if you die, you just die. But meanwhile, do what the doctor says.” He frequently made the point that his fellow countrymen and women were usually calm in the face of calamity, whether in the form of personal trauma of getting bad news in a clinical or hospital setting, or even a prognosis of eminent death. This equanimity he attributed to their having been raised in a culture that embraces aging, sickness and death as natural and foreordained, rather than in one that approaches them with fear and loathing. Even young children in Japan are, or used to be, exposed to the teachings of Buddhism, and the practice of zazen, as a regular part of their upbringing.

We like to think that Buddha’s experience under the Bodhi tree that night so long ago represented the absolute apogee of good health and wellness, in all its dimensions – physical, mental, emotional, and even social. Yet it included the robust embrace of the ineradicable marks of biological, sentient existence: impermanence manifested as aging; suffering manifested as illness, both physiological and psychological; and no-self arising as the specter of death, the fear of non-existence on the personal plane.

It seems that our modern obsession with youth and longevity lobbies against any wide acceptance of these natural marks, or transitions, of our existence as human beings. But all sentient beings are subject to their inevitability - no exceptions, theistic beliefs notwithstanding. Perhaps this may be seen as the true source of the neurotic aspects of this age of anxiety. We are confronted with these marks on a progressive basis, as we age and become increasingly infirm, or frail. It is best to engage them on the cushion, when we are young and strong, but better later than never.

In the next segment of UnMind, we will take up the meaning of death, in the context of Dharma as the compassionate teachings. Until then, do not hesitate to allow your view of aging, sickness and death, your personal take on mortality, to enter into your zazen. It cannot hurt, and cannot be avoided in the long run.

[1] Published on Soto Zen Net (www.sotozen-net.or.jp) on April 3rd, 2020

Translated by Soto Zen Buddhism International Center

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

ZEN AT WORK, AT HOME, AT PLAY

This segment of UnMind is based on some questions raised by one of the members of ASZC. While she moved out of the Atlanta area, she stays in touch through weekly participation in my Online Dharma Dialog program. As an aside, if you think you may be interested in establishing a dialog about your practice, let me know via email — you can find my address on the ASZC web page.

This person was not born in the USA, and so has the compound complications in her daily life of assimilating into a foreign culture, and communicating in a second language, much as Matsuoka Roshi had to do in bringing Zen to America back in 1940. Her questions are as insightful and revealing as Sensei’s choice of areas of life in America to relate to Zen in his dharma talks. We will be publishing many of them in a new collection called “A Pioneer of American Zen: The Wisdom, Warmth and Wit of Soyu Matsuoka, Roshi.” Keep a sharp eye out for it in June of next year.

Let us turn to her questions, addressing each of them from a perspective of Zen and Design Thinking. They are primarily about relationships with other people, and how they affect your relationship to yourself, if that is not too redundant. We will take them on in a slightly different order than submitted, beginning with those that have to do with the work environment, and the community of colleagues we find there. These work-related issues, taken together, come under the rubric of “Right Livelihood,” on the traditional Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism.

1. How does one practice being grounded, or doing the right thing, in a             competitive world?

The answer to any such question, from a Zen perspective, will necessarily include taking the issue to the cushion, in zazen, and then bringing any conclusions and recommendations from what transpires on the cushion back to the office, laboratory, or whatever context in which you find yourself working.

Let’s contextualize this issue a bit to begin with, looking at the bigger picture before boiling it down to any personally actionable items. I think it necessary and reasonable to suggest, and to take into account, that the very nature of the zeitgeist of right livelihood in our times adds to the stress load that we are carrying on our shoulders today. This is not your daddy’s job market. And it certainly is not the one that Buddha confronted, nor any of the other Zen masters in the lineage from India, China, or Japan. The very scope of manifold options available today, choosing between jobs and side hustles that may seem to offer advantages in terms of flex-time or working from home, versus employer preferences for dragging you into the office — entailing social dimensions of in-person contact with associates and management — may simply add to the frustration of making the right choice of career, and its accompanying working modality, for each individual.

Choices between careers that allow for remote employment and those that don’t are becoming yet another factor in whether one chooses to train in various trades, or aspire to what used to be called “higher learning.” This so-called higher learning basically amounts to preparation for a professional trade, instead of one based on hands-on skills and hourly labor, quaintly referred to as “blue-collar” jobs, or the Hard Working Americans politicians love to talk about. As if they themselves are hard-working. Many are opting for the simplicity of the latter, where they may make a dependable living wage, in many cases higher than their counterparts, in what used to be called “white-collar” occupations.

Naturally, time-of-life considerations come into play, as articulated by those who research these kinds of issues, such as part-time student employment, married with children, empty nester, the “sandwich generation,” and so forth. Daily life is so complicated these days that we may need to develop the “Sixteen Noble Truths,” and the “Fifty-four-fold Noble Path.” One dimension being paying off student debt.

As testament to the scale of complexity of this question, if you search “being grounded in a competitive world,” you get:

About 688,000,000 results (0.44 seconds) 

Somewhere in that virtual warehouse full of pages you may find the kind of advice that fits your situation, but it is entirely possible that you will not. Access to unlimited information is not necessarily a solution to this problem, or any other aspect of living a Zen life, in the midst of the chaos of modern society. More information just adds insult to injury. But from the perspective of Design Thinking and Zen, let’s consider just the single aspect of what we mean by “competition.” Here, let’s include a second, corollary question:

2. How to avoid harboring resentment when you are with the same people on a daily basis, and you have some history [of conflict].

I developed a couple of concepts for exhibits, working with some of the subcommittees and sponsoring corporations in the leadup to the 1996 Summer Olympics here in Atlanta, who were then marketing the event around the emergent issues of recycling, reusing, and repurposing of waste materials. The various Atlanta-based sponsors wanted to get credit for their efforts in this endeavor, for being “environmentally friendly,” touting its implications for the ecosystem, the “good citizenship” of corporations, and so on. In one of many meetings, it dawned on me, with startling clarity, that the seeming distinction  between competition and cooperation is one without a real difference. That is, in team sports, such as basketball or soccer, the outcome is usually determined by which team manages to better cooperate amongst its members, beating those who are beset by individuals showing off, “hot-dogging,” “show-boating,” and often missing the play that another member might have made.

Sports that are more dependent upon individual performance, such as skiing, speed skating, or swimming, are less dependent upon collaboration. That is, until one takes into consideration the training process that leads to elite performance. The athletes’ collaboration with their coach or coaches, and their level of ability to take direction, as well as the wisdom of the coaching staff, become determinative factors in their success.

For athletes already at or near the top of their game, the coach does not have to move their dial very much, raising the bar as high as humanly possible. Think Michael Jordan, or Katie Ledecky. However, as in Zen meditation training, if the athlete is not willing to do the work, no amount of coaching, however skillful, is going to help.

Bringing it back down to earth, one thing to consider is a truism: the strongest competition is to be found in cooperation. Or, better, collaboration. And remember, the modern theory of collaboration is that it is only possible, or at least most doable, between two individuals. Think Lennon and McCartney. Or Lenin and Trotsky.

If you are suffering from “bad boss syndrome,” or feeling excluded from the good-old-boy network at work, try homing in on each of your apparent competitors — or, worst-case, enemies — one at a time. Get them alone in a private setting, non-threatening and away from the fray, off-campus and out-of-office. Interview them as to their aspirations, beyond the obvious goals and objectives in the company. See if you cannot find some common ground on which to build a better, more collaborative relationship, while still keeping it professional. Try this with all your co-workers. Begin with the least competitive to yourself and work your way up the ladder. Remembering the old nostrum:

Be kind to those you meet on your way up the ladder; they will be the same ones you meet on the way down.

On the personal front, remember to foster the “halo effect” of Zen, in particular the three dispositions of zazen, when you find yourself stressing out at your work station or in the board room. Assume the posture. Follow the breath, counting if necessary. Expand your attention to include everything, without bias. As the ancient Ch’an poem encourages us:

Move among and intermingle without distinction.

Your body and mind will appreciate it — including your neuronal networks, heartbeat, and endocrine system. So will your fellow workers. They may begin wondering, and asking, how you can be so calm? when everyone else is freaking out, usually over trivia.

Extensions of this approach include chanting on the commute, meditating while walking through the campus and buildings where you work, and treating the vicissitudes of the day as Dharma. Buddha’s teaching, and the practice of Zen, is only one thing. But that “one thing” is all-inclusive. The Yogi welcomes adverse circumstance as grist to the mill. “Through change, consume change,” as the ancient admonition has it. And change, after all, is all there is. You will never run out of it.

Next time we will look at other more personal aspects of relationships, expressed in other incisive questions from the same, sincere source. If you find such issues bubbling up in your everyday swim in the ocean of Samsara, please don’t hesitate to send them to me — again, you may find my email on the ASZC web page. And check out my two available books on this timelier-than-ever subject: “The Original Frontier”; and “The Razorblade of Zen” (see links in the post). Meanwhile, keep on sitting. Someday you will find your zazen to be “still enough,” and for “long enough,” to overcome all obstacles at work, at home, and at play.

 THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO

In one of the recent segments of this podcast, titled “What if This is Hell?” I indulged a “what if” conjecture, speculating that this earthly life may not be some kind of test, as many religions conceive of it — wherein those who pass the test go to their reward in heaven, while those who fail are condemned to an eternity in hell — but that this level of existence, if there are levels, may actually be Hell itself, with a capital “H”. I then explored the implications of that supposition. In the last segment, titled “Change the World,” I carried the thread a bit further, issuing a challenge to consider: What would you actually do, if you had the power to change the world? Where would you begin?

Unfortunately, these days, everything is subject to being politicized, and even classified as partisan, especially if we dare to be even mildly critical of the status quo. So I want you to indulge me in a huge caveat, here. Please set aside any knee-jerk reactions to read a partisan or political slant into my discussion of the world as I see it, and my fears of where it may be going in the near future. I don’t have all the facts at my disposal, needless to say, which places me in the same class as all other current commentators and writers. Nobody has their arms around “the full catastrophe” — thank you, Zorba the Greek. These issues are not merely a matter of political opinion. They may turn out to be not only legal in their impact, but lethal in their unintended consequences.

In an early piece, lost somewhere in my ever-expanding archive of prior writings, I made the somewhat specious point that it is not lost on me — that those who are (or have been) most resistant to recognizing the validity of concerns over global warming, or the less threatening label, “climate change”; and those who have been loudest in sounding the alarm about it  — tend to be reflective of the two dominant political parties, as currently defined.

I am also keenly aware of another correlation, that the former tend to populate the so-called “flyover,” rural areas of the country — let’s call them the “Reds” — while the latter are more concentrated in coastal, urban locales — let’s call them the “Blues,” in keeping with the tropes of the times, as well as Orwell’s characterization of the permanent state of global warfare in 1984, if memory serves, reporting on the battles between “the reds” and “the blues,” with our side constantly winning, of course.

Thus, my hopefully ironic point was, if worse comes to worst, and the coastal areas are flooded by rising ocean waters owing to the worst scenarios predicted by the “woke” faction coming true, some may welcome the idea that we will have a truly “red” country from coast to coast, though on a significantly smaller continent, as all of the “blue” coastal cities are now under water. A crude but compelling rendering of one potential consequence of our actions, or inactions, following from our inattention to Mother Nature’s mandates.

But seriously, folks. Let us assume for the sake of argument that the doomsday predictions — of what are, after all, the majority of scientists around the globe — are for real. The oceans are irreversibly warming, and the ice caps at both poles are melting. The South Pole being the most threatening, apparently being defrosted from underneath by warming Antarctic waters. When those ice cubes fall into the drink, that glass of tea is going to overflow, and quickly. To the tune of a ten-foot rise in the world-around oceans, according to those who do the math. Goodbye New York, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Jacksonville, Miami, Savannah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, you say, we will just all move inland; head for the hills, the high ground.

The interior of the country is not exactly a paradisical refuge these days, what with natural-man-made disasters resulting in losses of crops, diminishing harvests, and resultant general mayhem disrupting country folks’ formerly pastoral lifestyle. Any refugees from the coasts will encounter forest fires, drought, flash floods, and geometrically expanding tornados and hurricanes, along with air pollution on steroids. What have historically been labeled as “once-in-a-lifetime,” “500-“ or “1000-year” events may now be annual, seasonal, or monthly, while increasing in magnitude each year

Further, in today’s divisive political climate, it is anyone’s guess whether the “blues” fleeing from the coastal deluge will find themselves welcomed, or confronted, by the “reds” — many of whom are armed to the teeth — as the scarcity of resources increases, and easy access to the necessities of life decreases.

Another major concern: major coastal flooding will not only take out major cities, or major parts of them, but will also disrupt the seaports through which much of the commerce of the world flows, including imports of fresh food increasingly shopped and shipped from other countries.

The most absurd example of this trend I have heard of had to do with a ship from China, a floating chicken factory, that regularly docks at a port in California to pick up a boatload of live chickens, then sails a wide circle in the ocean while “processing” them, only to return to the same dock and offload the meat. This is somehow more profitable than processing the chickens on the farm. And this is only one example of the international scale and scope of how the world “works” these days.

Throw in the possibility of yet another pandemic, with supply lines permanently — not temporarily — disrupted, and you begin to see the dystopian possibilities.

In this case, what’s a Zen person to do? One suggestion would be to not sweat the small stuff. And its corollary: it’s all small stuff. At least, our usual, trivial preoccupations are.

Those of you who follow my podcast may recognize the following anecdote, from UnMind #111: “Analysis and Analogy.” Please forgive the redundancy — and the absurdity of quoting myself — but the story has relevancy to our current thread of Design Thinking and Zen, in the dystopian present. It bears repeating one more time.

We once had a young man visit the Zen center who had trained with Tony Packer, the heir apparent to Roshi Philip Kapleau, who had famously turned down an offer to take up his mantle, the robe of a transmitted Zen priest. She had published a book on her approach to practicing Zen without calling it Zen, titled “The Work of This Moment” if memory serves, which I asked to borrow from him. One of her main points in the text was to avoid falling into “comparative thinking,” which was exactly what this young man had done. From the first time he joined the meditation sessions, he continually questioned and criticized each and every detail of the protocols we followed at that time.

To address his concerns, I invited him to give a guest talk on his opinions, or hers, which was received with the sympathetic skepticism you would expect from a community of folks who had all had similar reservations, as to the protocols of a practice inherited from Japanese and Chinese traditions.

I also made up a parable, or analogy, for him to consider. To wit: A monk is travelling through a remote mountain pass late at night, needing to get to the other side of the range. A sudden storm blows up, forcing him to seek shelter. Fortunately, he finds a cave nearby, and settles down to wait out the weather. But as his eyes adjust to the dark of the cave, and his sense of smell adapts to the stale air, he begins to notice the remains of carcasses strewn about the floor. Just as he realizes that he is ensconced in the lair of some kind of beast, and is preparing to make his escape, a large, furry silhouette appears in the entrance, blocking him from leaving. Standing there, shaking in fear, he asks himself: Now, what is the best way to confront this situation: standing flat on my feet, or up on my toes?

In a situation like this, the details are clearly not all that relevant, and can even create a distraction from what is, starkly, relevant: the “clear and present danger.”

Similarly, in the situation we are now confronting globally, details fall into insignificance. We are left with the question posed by Master Dogen, in Fukanzazengi—Principles of Seated Meditation, when he asks:

Now that you know the most important thing in Buddhism, how can you be satisfied with the transient world? Our bodies are like dew on the grass and our lives like a flash of lightning — vanishing in a moment.

If you have listened to UnMind #53: “Principles of Zazen,” this will sound familiar and, again, somewhat redundant, but if anything bears repetition, it is Dogen’s teaching. What is “the most important thing” in all of Buddhism?; after he has rattled off several pages of things to consider. The same question gets to the point in our present dire straits: what is the most important thing to do about it? How to go about “actualizing the fundamental point,” another Dogenism from his classic Genjokoan. This is the koan of the present moment in history, which may mark the end of history as we know it.

The end did not come in 1989, when Francis Fukuyama controversially and prematurely predicted that liberal democracy had triumphed, and in his 1992 book, “The End of History and the Last Man,” fulfilling the earlier vision of Hegel (see link in the post):

Hegel had argued that history has a telos or goal – an end point – equivalent to the emergence of a perfectly rational and just state. That state would guarantee the liberty necessary for the full development of all human capacities. At the same time, it would exist in a state of perpetual peace with other – similarly configured – states.

Would that it had come to pass, but like all visions of the future — utopian or dystopian — certain determinative factors were left out of the calculation. Just as legal trumps political, no pun intended; natural trumps legal and political. Mother Nature will not be denied, no matter how “evolved” we consider the machinations of humankind to be.

We are all complicit, if not equally responsible, for the kettle of hot water in which we find ourselves. The problem of human survival on a global scale is too vast and variable to be amenable to discrete definition, so we are forced to resort to the old trope to “think globally but act locally.” In Buddha’s time it was no different, the “act locally” part, that is, but in terms of thinking globally, they did not have the overwhelming glut of information that we “enjoy” today. But Buddha’s prescription for addressing the problems of life and society still apply today. Take good care of yourself and those around you.    

Whatever comes to pass, and however our lives come to their conclusion, there was never any other ending to the story. What matters is what we do about it now. As Matsuoka Roshi would often say, demonstrating the zazen posture, “This is the most you can do.” Zen is a way of action. If you get straight with yourself on the cushion — your life, your death — you will more likely know what to do, and when to do it, off the cushion. Don’t look to me, or anyone else, for specifics, but “Be a light unto yourself.” Spread the word.

ZEN VERSUS DAILY LIFE 7

Worst Case

We have lived to see

The worst-case scenario

Let us sit it out.

THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO

In one of the recent segments of this podcast, titled “What if This is Hell?” I indulged a “what if” conjecture, speculating that this earthly life may not be some kind of test, as many religions conceive of it — wherein those who pass the test go to their reward in heaven, while those who fail are condemned to an eternity in hell — but that this level of existence, if there are levels, may actually be Hell itself, with a capital “H”. I then explored the implications of that supposition. In the last segment, titled “Change the World,” I carried the thread a bit further, issuing a challenge to consider: What would you actually do, if you had the power to change the world? Where would you begin?

Unfortunately, these days, everything is subject to being politicized, and even classified as partisan, especially if we dare to be even mildly critical of the status quo. So I want you to indulge me in a huge caveat, here. Please set aside any knee-jerk reactions to read a partisan or political slant into my discussion of the world as I see it, and my fears of where it may be going in the near future. I don’t have all the facts at my disposal, needless to say, which places me in the same class as all other current commentators and writers. Nobody has their arms around “the full catastrophe” — thank you, Zorba the Greek. These issues are not merely a matter of political opinion. They may turn out to be not only legal in their impact, but lethal in their unintended consequences.

In an early piece, lost somewhere in my ever-expanding archive of prior writings, I made the somewhat specious point that it is not lost on me — that those who are (or have been) most resistant to recognizing the validity of concerns over global warming, or the less threatening label, “climate change”; and those who have been loudest in sounding the alarm about it  — tend to be reflective of the two dominant political parties, as currently defined.

I am also keenly aware of another correlation, that the former tend to populate the so-called “flyover,” rural areas of the country — let’s call them the “Reds” — while the latter are more concentrated in coastal, urban locales — let’s call them the “Blues,” in keeping with the tropes of the times, as well as Orwell’s characterization of the permanent state of global warfare in 1984, if memory serves, reporting on the battles between “the reds” and “the blues,” with our side constantly winning, of course.

Thus, my hopefully ironic point was, if worse comes to worst, and the coastal areas are flooded by rising ocean waters owing to the worst scenarios predicted by the “woke” faction coming true, some may welcome the idea that we will have a truly “red” country from coast to coast, though on a significantly smaller continent, as all of the “blue” coastal cities are now under water. A crude but compelling rendering of one potential consequence of our actions, or inactions, following from our inattention to Mother Nature’s mandates.

But seriously, folks. Let us assume for the sake of argument that the doomsday predictions — of what are, after all, the majority of scientists around the globe — are for real. The oceans are irreversibly warming, and the ice caps at both poles are melting. The South Pole being the most threatening, apparently being defrosted from underneath by warming Antarctic waters. When those ice cubes fall into the drink, that glass of tea is going to overflow, and quickly. To the tune of a ten-foot rise in the world-around oceans, according to those who do the math. Goodbye New York, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Jacksonville, Miami, Savannah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, you say, we will just all move inland; head for the hills, the high ground.

The interior of the country is not exactly a paradisical refuge these days, what with natural-man-made disasters resulting in losses of crops, diminishing harvests, and resultant general mayhem disrupting country folks’ formerly pastoral lifestyle. Any refugees from the coasts will encounter forest fires, drought, flash floods, and geometrically expanding tornados and hurricanes, along with air pollution on steroids. What have historically been labeled as “once-in-a-lifetime,” “500-“ or “1000-year” events may now be annual, seasonal, or monthly, while increasing in magnitude each year

Further, in today’s divisive political climate, it is anyone’s guess whether the “blues” fleeing from the coastal deluge will find themselves welcomed, or confronted, by the “reds” — many of whom are armed to the teeth — as the scarcity of resources increases, and easy access to the necessities of life decreases.

Another major concern: major coastal flooding will not only take out major cities, or major parts of them, but will also disrupt the seaports through which much of the commerce of the world flows, including imports of fresh food increasingly shopped and shipped from other countries.

The most absurd example of this trend I have heard of had to do with a ship from China, a floating chicken factory, that regularly docks at a port in California to pick up a boatload of live chickens, then sails a wide circle in the ocean while “processing” them, only to return to the same dock and offload the meat. This is somehow more profitable than processing the chickens on the farm. And this is only one example of the international scale and scope of how the world “works” these days.

Throw in the possibility of yet another pandemic, with supply lines permanently — not temporarily — disrupted, and you begin to see the dystopian possibilities.

In this case, what’s a Zen person to do? One suggestion would be to not sweat the small stuff. And its corollary: it’s all small stuff. At least, our usual, trivial preoccupations are.

Those of you who follow my podcast may recognize the following anecdote, from UnMind #111: “Analysis and Analogy.” Please forgive the redundancy — and the absurdity of quoting myself — but the story has relevancy to our current thread of Design Thinking and Zen, in the dystopian present. It bears repeating one more time.

We once had a young man visit the Zen center who had trained with Tony Packer, the heir apparent to Roshi Philip Kapleau, who had famously turned down an offer to take up his mantle, the robe of a transmitted Zen priest. She had published a book on her approach to practicing Zen without calling it Zen, titled “The Work of This Moment” if memory serves, which I asked to borrow from him. One of her main points in the text was to avoid falling into “comparative thinking,” which was exactly what this young man had done. From the first time he joined the meditation sessions, he continually questioned and criticized each and every detail of the protocols we followed at that time.

To address his concerns, I invited him to give a guest talk on his opinions, or hers, which was received with the sympathetic skepticism you would expect from a community of folks who had all had similar reservations, as to the protocols of a practice inherited from Japanese and Chinese traditions.

I also made up a parable, or analogy, for him to consider. To wit: A monk is travelling through a remote mountain pass late at night, needing to get to the other side of the range. A sudden storm blows up, forcing him to seek shelter. Fortunately, he finds a cave nearby, and settles down to wait out the weather. But as his eyes adjust to the dark of the cave, and his sense of smell adapts to the stale air, he begins to notice the remains of carcasses strewn about the floor. Just as he realizes that he is ensconced in the lair of some kind of beast, and is preparing to make his escape, a large, furry silhouette appears in the entrance, blocking him from leaving. Standing there, shaking in fear, he asks himself: Now, what is the best way to confront this situation: standing flat on my feet, or up on my toes?

In a situation like this, the details are clearly not all that relevant, and can even create a distraction from what is, starkly, relevant: the “clear and present danger.”

Similarly, in the situation we are now confronting globally, details fall into insignificance. We are left with the question posed by Master Dogen, in Fukanzazengi—Principles of Seated Meditation, when he asks:

Now that you know the most important thing in Buddhism, how can you be satisfied with the transient world? Our bodies are like dew on the grass and our lives like a flash of lightning — vanishing in a moment.

If you have listened to UnMind #53: “Principles of Zazen,” this will sound familiar and, again, somewhat redundant, but if anything bears repetition, it is Dogen’s teaching. What is “the most important thing” in all of Buddhism?; after he has rattled off several pages of things to consider. The same question gets to the point in our present dire straits: what is the most important thing to do about it? How to go about “actualizing the fundamental point,” another Dogenism from his classic Genjokoan. This is the koan of the present moment in history, which may mark the end of history as we know it.

The end did not come in 1989, when Francis Fukuyama controversially and prematurely predicted that liberal democracy had triumphed, and in his 1992 book, “The End of History and the Last Man,” fulfilling the earlier vision of Hegel (see link in the post):

Hegel had argued that history has a telos or goal – an end point – equivalent to the emergence of a perfectly rational and just state. That state would guarantee the liberty necessary for the full development of all human capacities. At the same time, it would exist in a state of perpetual peace with other – similarly configured – states.

Would that it had come to pass, but like all visions of the future — utopian or dystopian — certain determinative factors were left out of the calculation. Just as legal trumps political, no pun intended; natural trumps legal and political. Mother Nature will not be denied, no matter how “evolved” we consider the machinations of humankind to be.

We are all complicit, if not equally responsible, for the kettle of hot water in which we find ourselves. The problem of human survival on a global scale is too vast and variable to be amenable to discrete definition, so we are forced to resort to the old trope to “think globally but act locally.” In Buddha’s time it was no different, the “act locally” part, that is, but in terms of thinking globally, they did not have the overwhelming glut of information that we “enjoy” today. But Buddha’s prescription for addressing the problems of life and society still apply today. Take good care of yourself and those around you.    

Whatever comes to pass, and however our lives come to their conclusion, there was never any other ending to the story. What matters is what we do about it now. As Matsuoka Roshi would often say, demonstrating the zazen posture, “This is the most you can do.” Zen is a way of action. If you get straight with yourself on the cushion — your life, your death — you will more likely know what to do, and when to do it, off the cushion. Don’t look to me, or anyone else, for specifics, but “Be a light unto yourself.” Spread the word.

Let’s recall our initial outline of areas of interest we are using to compare and contrast the Zen life with our usual preoccupations. To refresh your memory, they were, and are:

— Lifestyle: Monastic versus Householder

— Physical: Zazen versus the four Cardinal Postures

— Biological: Meditative breathing versus everyday situations

— Psychological: Shikantaza versus ordinary attention

In this segment we will take up the last of the four — attention — the third disposition, after posture and breath, of Matsuoka Roshi’s simplified model of zazen, Zen’s upright seated meditation.

One of his repeat instructions was that, “When the posture, breath, and attention all come together in a unified way, this is the real zazen.” Which implies that we may think we are practicing zazen, when we are not. And what determines whether we are, or not, is, mainly, our attention. We can be sitting in the natural, upright posture; and following the natural, full breathing cycle, all the while paying attention to the wrong thing; or, perhaps better to say, not really paying attention at all, in the Zen sense.

So, let’s examine what we mean by “attention,” and later, how it works in zazen. In marketing and design circles, attention is regarded as a kind of commodity, upon which we may place a value. That billboard on the expressway attracts a certain amount of attention from the drivers passing by. The owner of the billboard can charge a certain amount of rent, based on the number of “eyeballs” exposed to its message, the client’s message.

In today’s post-print media market, we are saturated with electronic media competing for our attention, seeking to maximize the amount of “clicks” or “hits” a message gets online, as well as on “legacy” or “traditional” media channels such as film, broadcast television, radio, and print publishing.

So one way to think about paying attention in Zen, granted that it is a choice we make, is to ask ourselves: What is the most important thing to pay attention to? Of course, I can hear you responding with the hip and flip, too-clever-by-far, all-too-predictable trope: “Everything.” Like the hotdog joke — the Zen master will have one with everything. Which, seriously, raises the question of whether that is even possible. Actually paying attention to everything simultaneously, that is.

Master Dogen, in his seminal tract on zazen, Fukanzazengi—Principles of Seated Meditation, at one point says:

Now that you know the most important thing in Buddhism

      how can you be satisfied with the transient world?

Our bodies are like dew on the grass and our lives like a flash of lightning 

Vanishing in a moment

This lands about two-thirds of the way though the text, and by then he has said maybe a hundred or so things about Buddhism, so it begs the question, “Which of these is the most important?” But I think we can safely surmise that it has something to do with attention.

The legendary Master Bodhidharma, credited with bringing the direct practice of Buddha’s meditation to China at the end of the 5th century CE, taught that it is not necessary — or should not be necessary — to do zazen, but that we have only to “grasp the vital principle.” Of course, for most of us, we have to burn through a lot of zazen to be able to grasp the vital principle of Zen. Notable exceptions include Master Huineng, the sixth in the Chinese succession in the 7th century, who underwent a profound experience of insight without benefit of a teacher, or any prior practice. This rare event is traditionally attributed to “merit accumulated in past lives.” But such prodigies are few and far between.

My theory is that the main reason that most of us have to sit in zazen to such an extreme extent is that the load of ignorance, personal opinions, and rationalizations we carry on our shoulders has accumulated to that extent. In design and art circles, we speak of two different fundamental kinds of processes working with material media. One is “additive”: lumping clay onto an armature to build a bust of Napoleon, for example; the other is “subtractive”: chipping away the stone to reveal Rodin’s “The Thinker.”

I find zazen to be mostly the latter. We are chipping away at our own ignorant ideas and preconceptions of reality to get to the bottom of things. And it’s a long way down.

So what we have to pay attention to is, or may be, “everything,” in one sense; but by taking one thing at a time. And there are a lot of things in the pile we have accumulated. “Pile,” by the way, is one meaning of “skandha” — a “heap,” or “aggregate” — of many like things. Which gets a mention early in the Heart Sutra chanted frequently in most Zen wheelhouses around the world.

O Shariputra, form is no other than Emptiness; Emptiness no other than form

Feeling, thought, impulse, and consciousness are likewise Emptiness

So there you have it. The four aggregates of sentient experience of which we can be conscious — the form, or appearance, of things; the feelings, both tactile and emotional, that we experience on both instinctual and intentional levels; the stream-of-conscious thoughts relentlessly emitted by the brain; and the underlying impulses triggered both subliminally and on the edges of awareness. And finally, consciousness itself, can become conscious of consciousness, “form and reflection” beholding each other, in Tozan Ryokai’s memorable phrase from Hokyo Zammai—Precious Mirror Samadhi.   

Back to Bodhidharma, who refers to this same point in an oblique manner: The great Buddhist saint went on to say that if and when we do zazen — in spite of his reluctance to claim the necessity of doing so — there are four basic aspects of ordinary awareness that we can observe, or pay attention to: the breath; physical sensations; emotional sensations, or mood swings; and finally, the machinations of the mind: our various thoughts or concepts, about everything and nothing. A four-pointed model.

I think one of Bodhidharma’s main points is that in observing the breath, we note that it comes and goes momentarily — we never breathe the same breath twice. Likewise for physical, emotional, and conceptual phenomena — they are ever-changing, by nature impermanent. Well, “Duh!” you say. But these are four of the main aspects of what it is to be a sentient being — those we most associate with our personal identity: This is MY breath; I am hot or cold, in pain, or comfortable; this is MY moodiness; and these are MY ideas. And yet all four are essentially ephemeral, like “a bubble on a stream,” to borrow from Shakyamuni himself.

So where does this pervading sense of continuity come from, this “persistence of vision,” and all the other senses? And what are we to make of this contrarian stanza  from Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind, by Master Sosan:

To move in the One Way

Do not reject even the world of senses and ideas

Indeed accepting them fully

Is identical with true enlightenment

As I discuss in excruciating detail in the chapter on “Deconstructing Your Senses in the Most Natural Way,” from my first book, ”The Original Frontier” (I know, I know, it is weird to be quoting from your own writing), as we settle into the relatively extreme stillness of zazen — fixed gaze and all — a kind of profound sensory adaptation begins to set in, which is also referenced in the Heart Sutra, just after the bit about the skandhas:

Given Emptiness

      [there are] no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind;

No seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching;

No realm of sight; no realm of mind-consciousness

So now we are getting a clue as to what to pay attention to in zazen. And the implication that things are not exactly as they seem to be, sensory-wise. If we simply sit still enough for long enough — and it is anything but simple — everything changes. Through the natural process of paying strict attention to the senses, the process of adaptation takes us through what is sometimes referred to as samatha, or samadhi — calming or stilling the mind; and eventually, and hopefully, vipassana, kensho or satori in Japanese; or what is referred to as “spiritual insight.” Which, by definition, is different from, but inclusive of, normal sight. Do you “see” what I mean? Then the Sutra goes on to say:   

And so no ignorance; [and] no end of ignorance;

No sickness, old age and death; no end of sickness old age and death

Whoa! Here is a whiplash-inducing claim. Transcending the senses — as we ordinarily experience and interpret them — takes a seemingly sudden turn, eliminating the very ignorance that has been bedeviling us all along. It also magically relieves us of the burden of the three main marks of dukkha, or sentient suffering: sickness, old age, and death. This challenges our credulity. That those things we fear most in life: the loss of life itself, through the random crapshoot of contracting one of the innumerable fatal illnesses threatening us; or the natural process of aging out of life, just as we age out of our professions and familial responsibilities. Is it all just a figment of our imaginations?    

In summation, we are all paying full attention every moment of our waking day. But, like the proverbial monkey jumping from limb to limb of the tree of consciousness, it seems random and pointless. The challenge, and the question, becomes what is the most important thing in the flux-and-flow of daily life to pay attention to, and more precisely, how?

I would submit that we begin with accepting, and even embracing, the flux-and-flow itself. Master Nagarjuna, 14th in the Indian succession, where Bodhidharma was 28th, said something to the effect that enlightenment entails “seeing into the flux of arising, abiding, and decaying.” And it seems to me that that “abiding” piece is one source of our confusion. If anything is abiding, it is not for long, not in geological time, nor in the quantum realm. So a big part of what we are observing, or paying attention to, is change itself, the passing pageantry of life.

I would suggest that, as a benchmark, simply paying more attention to posture and, more pointedly, your breath, will help extend the halo effect of your meditation into every situation you confront in daily life. It may also begin to bring home the deeper meaning of the seemingly trivial and mundane activities which otherwise amount to distractions.

There is much more to say about attention, of course, as there is about posture and breath. But for the sake of simplicity, and the practical constraints of this podcast, I will leave that to your imagination and to your discovery in zazen. And I will leave you with a final caveat concerning the nature of the realization of insight, as well as the limits of our imagination, from Hsinhsinming:

With a single stroke we are freed from bondage

Nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing

All is empty; clear; self-illuminating;

      with no exertion of the mind's power

Here, thought, feeling, knowledge, and imagination are of no value

For more on Soto Zen, its meaning and application to our modern life and practice, please check out our online and in-person schedules on the Atlanta Soto Zen Center website, and register for my Master Class on the Soto Zen liturgical verses.

In the introductory segment to this UnMind series, we posited that amongst the many dimensions of everyday life, there are several contrasting pairs and sets of ideas that may be usefully employed to illustrate how our pursuit of a more comprehensive Zen life might be framed, including:

— Lifestyle: Monastic versus Householder

— Physical: Zazen versus the four Cardinal Postures

— Biological: Meditative breathing versus everyday situations

— Psychological: Shikantaza versus ordinary attention

Of course, it is impossible to truly separate these dimensions in the living dynamic of daily life, as will be seen, but it is necessary in order to simplify the presentation. In this segment, as promised, we will primarily discuss one of the physical dimensions: the zazen posture: upright sitting versus the four Cardinal Postures: normal sitting, standing, walking, and lying down. In context of the complexity of physical existence — which of course includes the biological and psychological, which we will take up at a later time — for now we want to focus simply on posture, specifically the zazen posture, which is very specific in itself. But we will get into its relationship to other aspects of posture, such as sitting at your desk, driving in traffic, running and crawling.

Remember where this all begins. It is something of a stretch to even regard the proprioception of an infant — their awareness of the disposition of their body in space — as a “posture.” Swaddled in their mother’s or father’s arms, lying in the crib, et cetera, the baby is probably only dimly aware of its separation from the environment, let alone the various postures its body assumes. Then as we grow, we learn to raise our head, prop our shoulders up off the mattress with our arms, turn over, sit up, and eventually stand, pulling ourselves up with the side of the crib. Eventually we escape the crib onto the floor, where we gradually learn to stand without assistance, and take the first tentative steps of our larger sweepout into the world.

Recall that before we sit, we are lying down; before we stand, we sit; before we walk, we crawl; before we run, we walk. There is a natural hierarchy of posture development, mostly determined by that relentless teacher, gravity. We will return to an examination of gravity on the cushion. Sitting, as Zen’s primary posture, is not an arbitrary choice.

Consider lying down as our initial posture, and when we are most at rest. It is the least aggressive of postures, an attribute captured by the common trope, usually expressed as an admonition, not to “take it lying down.” In other words, to not let yourself be a “doormat,” letting others walk all over you. This is the typical stance of the self-reliant, American cult of the individual, and sometimes takes a dark turn these days, when someone feels “dissed,” especially in a public situation. All too often ending in deadly violence, with guns a-blazing. So, “posture” can have a non-physical, or psychological connotation as well: the posture, or stance, that we take up in social situations.

But let’s keep it simple for now. Consider the supine or prone position of lying down. Surprisingly to me, “supine” means face-up, and “prone” means face-down, according to the dictionary. Then we have the well-known “fetal position,” and all the “tossing-and-turning” variations associated with sleeping, or the ravages of insomnia, fed by anxiety.

However, as I mention in “The Original Frontier,” when lying down to sleep, we can shift gears from our usual approach to getting some shuteye, to one informed by zazen.  When we engage the upright sitting posture of Zen, the main physical difference between it and lying down is the axis of the spine and spinal cord in relation to gravity. This may seem unimportant at first glance, but I think it is critical to the way zazen works. Coming into balance, direct vertical alignment with gravity, is one of the “secrets” of zazen. “Samadhi,” a jargon term of the meditation business, means, roughly, “balanced” or “centered,” or both. Sitting up straight is also characteristic of most styles of meditation on offer, but other approaches do not emphasize it as much as does Zen.

This explains the stress — no pun intended — on arching the small of the back, pushing forward and down; while stretching the back of the neck, tucking the chin in with the face slightly downcast; thus creating two pressure points, one in the base of the neck pulling upward, the other in the base of the spine where it joins the tailbone, pushing forward and down. Maintaining these two pressure points keeps the spine aligned in a rigorous, and vigorous pose that feels more like a comfortable, refreshing stretching action than ponderous, muscular resistance training. It has been likened to a lion or tiger ready to pounce (like the lion asana in yoga, but not as exaggerated). I like my own analogy of a cobra rising off the floor — ready to strike the unwary, maybe — but perhaps only dancing to the music of the snake-charmer’s flute.

The horizontal positions — prone or supine — obviously change the relationship of the spine to the effects of gravity. We all know that we shrink with age, owing to our vertical stance, which began long ago on the savannah, ever since we stopped running on all fours.

At a certain point in my life, it became clear that taking naps in the daytime might be a good idea. When I first attempted to sleep when tired, either physically or mentally or both, I found it very difficult. Everything, from the relatively bright daylight, to the ambient sound, was a distraction, and struggling to sleep in the midst of it just wore me out even more. I tried tamping down the volume to a dull roar, by wearing a blindfold and earplugs, which only seemed to make things worse I began to wonder why I could not sleep when I wanted to, when at other times it seemed relatively easy to nod off. I began to look for the “switch,” that cellular-level toggle that the brain throws when it switches from conscious awareness to the unconscious, or the dream state.

I resorted to just paying full attention to whatever was happening — the random airplane flying over,  traffic on the street, sounds emanating from the neighbors, the birds, peepers and crickets — and especially to body sensations. At first, it was easy to concentrate on one part of the body at a time: my head on the pillow, which felt surprisingly heavy, once I lifted it and released it. The relatively lightweight impressions of the extremities — hands and feet — was also a bit of a surprise, while the mass of the trunk, and upper legs and arms, seemed to be where the unrest was centered. I had learned of the “relaxation response” during my past engagement with hatha yoga, so I began running through that in an orderly fashion, squeezing and relaxing various muscle groups one at a time. But the intentionality of the exercise seemed to keep me awake. It was only when I surrendered to the totality of what was happening — seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking — sound familiar? —  that I began to doze off. So yes, not zazen, but perhaps “neruzen” (in Japanese, za is “sit”; neru is  “sleep”)

Later I learned a method which Hakuin Zenji, the famous 18th century Rinzai master, taught to his students, which you can find in either the first or second of Trevor Leggett’s early Zen readers. It is called “Naikan Tanden,” and has to do with synchronizing the breath with an exaggerated supine position. I will not go into detail here, but if you are interested in following up this thread, please let me know. Suffice it to say that one thing I discovered was that by stretching the body in an extreme, symmetrical supine position — flat on your back and extending the lower legs with feet pressed together, intoning the four visualizations Hakuin learned from his teacher —  sure enough, after some time you begin to drop off. At the end of a long exhalation. Which we will talk about more in the segment on Zen breathing.

Recall the details of Master Dogen’s instructions for assuming the zazen posture, which we still follow, virtually verbatim, eight centuries later. Again, we will not go into detail here, assuming you have heard the instructions more than once by now. If not, again, do not hesitate to contact me. For now let’s look at another situation in which we find ourselves sitting: driving in rush hour traffic. The first podcast I ever recorded was called “Stress and Choice,” under the rubric of “Drive-time Zen.” I reasoned that the most stressful and common experience most of us have in modern times is the commute, to and from our place of employment. With the surge in remote working arrangements, this is changing somewhat, but in any major metropolitan area, is still predominate. The advent of self-driving vehicles may make a further dent in this dilemma, but that has its own stress-inducing aspects as well, so far as the technology has been refined to date.

So the amount of transfer, or halo-effect, that zazen can have on the driver’s seat may seem insignificant, especially if you haven’t tried it. Along with other Zen practices that we may take up later in the series, such as breathing, and even chanting, minor adjustments to your posture while driving can have an outsized effect. Simply sitting up straighter, applying the petal-to-the-metal approach to the lower spine, and pulling back on the chin to achieve the cobra posture, can help keep you alert and attentive to what is happening in front of your vehicle, behind it, and on both sides.

Our attention expands in zazen to take in everything, mitigating the possibility that you may get fixated on one aspect of the dangerous situation you are in — on the modern expressway at full speed — and helping you to maintain a degree of calmness while fully aware of the clear and present danger. It can also help you recognize that everyone else around you is in the same boat, but they may not have the advantage of training in the alert, upright posture of zazen. That is why they are doing foolish and dangerous things like speeding, jumping lanes, cutting others off, and generally making a bad situation much worse, in their heedless hurry to get where they are going. It reminds me of the line from Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind:

Living in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult
But those with limited views are fearful and irresolute
The faster they hurry the slower they go

Another specific suggestion will suffice to wrap this segment up; I will leave it to your creativity to conjure and discover more grafts from Zen practice, such as how your daily walking may be informed by your experience of walking meditation, or kinhin. The next time you find yourself doing some heavy lifting, such as yard work on a hot and muggy day, as I have been doing this summer, when you take a break to cool down and catch your breath, instead of slumping in a lawn chair, set a stool or bench in the shade and sit in the zazen posture, removing your work gloves and dropping your hands into the mudra, eyes downcast, et cetera. You should be able to feel and/or hear your heartbeat right away, if the exertion has been extreme enough, and you are probably panting at a rapid rate.

You might want to begin with counting the breath, but if and when you can hear or feel your heartbeat, count your pulse beating instead, and notice how many beats per cycle of breath, counting only the out-breath. If you are like me, you will notice that your breath soon slows down, and with it, your heartbeat. With each exhalation, let the lungs empty out as completely as comfortable; and allow a little pause before inhaling. As that moment becomes longer with each cycle, the inbreath becomes fuller, giving the body the oxygen it needs; and the exhalation becomes more like a sigh of relief, relaxing the body, the breath, and your heartrate. Soon you will be good to go again.

In the next segment, we will take up the unique approach to breathing characteristic of Zen. Meanwhile, keep breathing, of course, and slow down to the rapid rate of change of the present moment. You will be safer — and happier — because of it.

Continuing our exploration of what aspects of Zen training we might reasonably incorporate into our daily life activities, we turn to the aspect of breathing. This we listed under the rubric of the biological: meditative breathing versus everyday situations. With an initial caveat to remember that we are not talking about breath control, but finding and following the natural breath in various circumstances.

Beginning with how we are instructed to breathe while sitting in zazen, the very fact that we are following instructions skews the process in the direction of controlling, but, much like Master Dogen’s “backward step,” we relinquish our tendency to control, while merely observing the breath as dispassionately as we learn to observe our own thoughts. The body is doing just fine with controlling the breath, thank you very much, and we would do well to stop interfering.

Nonetheless, because our habits of breathing have become as conditioned as our habits of thought, wiser and cooler heads have compassionately defined our approach to breathing as an adjunct to calming the mind. So we are told to begin with a full exhalation, pushing the breath out through the mouth in short bursts, the so-called “bamboo breath,” for the short sections of a bamboo culm, until the lungs are empty. Then allowing the in-breath to fill the lungs entirely. This amounts to a palliative to our tendency to palpitate, breathing rapidly and shallowly, in the upper part of the lungs.

Various ways of focusing our attention on breathing cycles, such as counting them in some simple way, are suggested as provisional methods for corralling our wandering mind, sometimes referred to as “monkey mind.” So already we can see that we cannot separate the “physical” or “biological” dimensions of the method from the psychological. Zen, and zazen, are one holistic practice. But we cannot address it in words in a holistic manner, language itself being dualistic.

However, after taking it apart intentionally, it will put itself back together naturally, in a more harmonious manner. As Matsuoka Roshi would often say, “When the posture, breath, and attention all come together in a unified way, that is the real zazen.”

This process of unification — or, to use Dogen’s term: merging — is not something we can force, of course. It has to take its own good time to integrate into our natural frame of mind, which again follows from assuming the natural upright sitting posture, and following the natural breath. The body knows this posture, and the body will show you this breath, if you but allow it to.

So, likewise, carrying the breath over into daily life also becomes a process of following, or observing, the breath as it naturally adapts to circumstances. We all experience this process during what Grandma used to call her “daily constitutional” — her morning or evening walk in the great outdoors. When setting out, if we pay attention, we may note that we are inhaling once with every four steps, exhaling with four or more. Then after a while, if we continue at the same pace, the breath picks up to every three steps, then two, then each step may coincide with an inbreath or an outbreath. In other words, we end up panting at a brisk pace. We may even have to sit for a moment to “catch our breath.” While sitting, the breath starts slowing back down as we build up the oxygen deficit that triggers the rapid breath.

At this point of relatively extreme exertion, you may be able to feel, and even hear, your heartbeat, at its more rapid frequency, and louder pulse. When sitting in zazen, this is the point at which I recommend switching to counting the heartbeat instead of the breath. You will notice that your heart is beating so many times per breath cycle: maybe four beats per inbreath, four per outbreath. If you continue paying undivided attention, you may note that the outbreath is becoming longer, the number of heartbeats extending, to perhaps six or so. You may also realize that the pulse itself is slowing down, as the breath is becoming fuller, again replenishing the oxygen the body needs.

Let me model this process for you, following my own natural cadence synchronizing my  heartbeat and breath, which slows to about five cycles per minute. Your results may vary. “In — two, three, four; out — two, three, four; in — two, three, four; out — two, three, four; in — two, three, four; out — two, three, four. And so on.

It should be obvious that this same focus of attention on the breath will carry over into other situations, where our level of physical exertion is not exaggerated, but our emotional reactions may be triggering an acceleration of our heartbeat. Such as stressful meetings at the office, or encounters with perceived enemies or threats, even conflictual exchanges with family and friends.

Remembering to turn our attention to our breath, and in turn to our heartbeat, we can recognize that our feelings of discomfort or anxiety have a physical, biological source: a rapid heartbeat. And that our way of dealing with it can be on that level, rather than on the social level of argumentation and interpersonal conflict. We return to the inner, so to speak, to confront the outer. Turns out there is no separation of those apparent binaries.

As we  extend the discussion to a more granular breakdown of time and action, as also suggested in the early going of this series, we see that we can apply this hyper-focus on breath to the many disparate events we confront in daily life, such as the different dayparts, as the restaurant industry identifies them, when the menu of interest changes: morning; afternoon; evening; nighttime — featuring breakfast, lunch and dinner, and so on. A focus on breath may go a long way to tempering our appetite for food, as breathing is a greater source of vital energy than is our intake of food. Not that we can live on air.

But if we pay greater attention to the daily chores mentioned earlier, such as taking our meals, while shopping for the food, with the additional angst occasioned by inflation,  and other anxiety-inducing demands such as maintaining health and hygiene, housekeeping, and pursuing our livelihood, including the commute to and from work, focusing on the breath throughout cannot hurt, and may actually help.

Next time you are on the expressway, in rush-hour traffic, just turn your attention to your breath for a while. See if you are not surprised by the rhythm and possibly raggedness of it. You might have a sense of remembering, “oh, yes, of course, I had forgotten there for a moment,” caught up in the aggravating circumstances of the moment. Mindfulness is primarily a process of remembering. Remembering what is important, what is actually happening in the moment, what we can, or should, pay attention to, in spite of the innumerable distractions we encounter.

Again, by extension, we remember calendar events, and mark their passing with rituals, protocols and celebrations, such as birthdays and anniversaries, on an annual basis; more frequent occasions such as weekend routines, holidays and vacations. In fact, we time our lives against this sequence of repeat events, which have little or no basis in brute reality — there is no such thing as a “weekend” in nature, for example — but they have a certain reality in the social sphere. If you do not think so, just forget to wish mom or dad happy birthday next time. So what does this have to do with breathing?

All of these ways of marking time reduce to daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, and annual events. But as the 8th century Ch’an poem, Hokyo Zammai—Precious MirrorSamadhi, by Tozan Ryokai, founder of Soto Zen in China, reminds us:

 Within causes and conditions, time and season, IT is serene and illuminating

The emphasis is mine, capitalizing the “IT” in this statement, which is traditional for translators’ choices in rendering the importance of “what” (J. inmo) these teachings are pointing at. It is the inexpressible, the ineffable, the essence of all phenomena, the noumenon. From Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind, the earlier poem by Kanchi Sosan:

Understanding the mystery of this one-essence

      we are released from all entanglement

So there is something else afoot, amid all the comings and goings of daily life over time, and inherent in all our conceptual markings of it: a more fundamental frequency, the pulse and breath of life and consciousness itself, or Mind with a capital “M.”

Throughout, and underlying, all of these changes experienced as varying concepts of time, there is a fundamental frequency, manifested biologically as heartbeat and breath, in a polyrhythm of complementary counterpoint. Remembering, and returning to, this basic tempo, and using these events as a daily reminder to do so, will help to tune us into the groove, following the metronome built into our body and mind.

This idea is not just based on my fevered imagination, or an overweening obsession with breathing and heartbeat. Buddha himself was said to have taught, paraphrasing, that “The mendicant, inhaling, realizes that they are inhaling. Exhaling, realizes that they are exhaling,” or something to that effect. Why would such a stupid-simple teaching be important, or necessary? Precisely because, usually — we don’t. As long as we are breathing, and our heart is beating, we don’t need to know. The brain simply turns off any conscious awareness of autonomic processes — until it doesn’t. When they stop, for example. Then all of our attention is suddenly on the heartbeat, and the breath. Serious as a heart attack, as we say.

So why not pay attention to this teaching, while we have the luxury of doing so voluntarily? Not only is the breath and heartbeat the rhythm section of our band — they comprise a barometer of where we are at the moment. Not only in terms of time, but also temperature (as in “chill” or “off the charts”). Following the breath, and your heart, will lead you to the Original Frontier of buddha-mind.

Next time we will attack the most complex of the three dispositions of body, breath and attention — that of paying attention to attention itself, with its implications for living the Zen life in the social sphere of community, or Sangha. Stay tuned, meanwhile, to your breath. And heartbeat.

Continuing our exploration of the various dimensions of daily life in modern America, and how we might more intentionally, and mindfully, carry over the insights and influences of our Zen practice, “applying“ them in a beneficial manner, I suggested that this process would necessarily involve turning a perceived negative into a positive, converting a confrontational approach to one of collaboration and complementarity.

That is, the perceived conflict between those special activities that we traditionally associate with what we call Zen “practice” — such as sitting in meditation — and those we categorize as “not practice” — such as, say, dealing with a bad boss — is just that: a perceived conflict, and not an actual one. As Matsuoka Roshi would often say, “There is no dichotomy in Zen.” The dichotomy is in the eye, or brain, of the beholder.

I place the term “applying” in quotes to create a caveat — in regards to Zen training in general, and to its relation to daily life in particular — to caution against implying that this constitutes the true meaning and value of Zen, reducing it to a transactional activity, like any other self-improvement routine. It bears repeating that adopting this attitude would amount to missing the point entirely, or what is traditionally referred to as “gedo Zen.” In looking up this phrase, I came across a rather curious website called The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (the link to the page is in the show notes). It offered a fairly complete, concise definition of gedo Zen that reads:

This is meditative exercise practised for spiritual and religious purposes but outside the path of Zen, by exponents of other religions. It includes Christian contemplation and the various forms of yoga. It also includes the practice of meditation by followers of Zen who see meditation as a means of achieving supernatural powers and abilities rather than for the purpose of self realization or for the welfare of all. Although this implies a rather lowly achievement for members of other religions, less traditionalist approaches (esoteric rather than exoteric) admit that higher forms of meditation are possible even by non-Buddhists, since Zen is the basis of all reality and all religion.

That last line caught my attention, as I did not expect anyone commenting in a public venue to give Zen that much centrality in the scheme of things, especially in the realm or religion. Many do not consider Zen to fit the category of religion as an institution. Zen does not allow a separation of the sacred and mundane, for example.

However, all religions as well as philosophical systems must include attitudes and approaches to the mundane aspects of life, whether exclusionary or inclusionary, the extremes being “evil,” or “of the devil,” versus “good” or “holy,” and “of the divine,” for example. This language is not characteristic of the way we frame expressions of Zen.

In fact, it seems preferable to speak of Zen in an idiom free of such fraught, emotion- and belief-ladened vernacular. Zen insight is often spoken of as “nothing special,” and a return to our “Original mind,” rather than as some sort of religious epiphany. So better not to venture too far down that rabbit-hole.

Returning to what Charlotte Joko Beck referred to as “Everyday Zen,” in an influential  book of that title published in 1989, we can set aside for the moment whether or not Zen is, or may become, your religion, in the sense of a fundamental worldview that embraces spirituality as a natural component of corporeality. Here, we are concerned more with the “how” of engaging Zen practice in an integrated way, rather than the “why” of it. Our design of this process may be more likened to a transfer of skill sets. Again, “doing my research,” as we like to say these days, the first result of about 640,000,000 brought me to a page at the Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning — again the link is in the show notes if you’d like to read for yourself:

“Transfer” is a cognitive practice whereby a learner’s mastery of knowledge or skills in one context enables them to apply that knowledge or skill in a different context. Because transfer signals that a learner’s comprehension allows them to recognize how their knowledge can be relevant and to apply it effectively outside original learning conditions, transfer is often considered a hallmark of true learning (Barnett & Ceci, 2002).

 The link in the show notes will allow those with a special interest to pursue this item further. The phrase of interest here is the last, “transfer is often considered a hallmark of true learning.” Master Dogen somewhere says that Zen practice comprises the development of ”true intelligence,” or something to that effect.

Another mentor of  mine, R. Buckminster Fuller, defines human intelligence in a similar manner. He says it is the ability to “extract the general principle from the many particular case experiences,” paraphrasing. An example is the concept of “fast” versus “slow.” The child finally “gets it” after being shown many disparate examples. Piaget promotes a similar principle in terms of learning in general.

In terms of the demands of daily life, which, when classified as “demands,” engender a knee-jerk resistance, I want to return to my prior comment that the process of Zen engagement may be characterized as turning a perceived negative into a positive.

Other common tropes suggesting this same attitude adjustment include “turning a push into a pull,” from the professional process of marketing products and services. This means public awareness of the item being marketed, creating a demand, so that the target audience seeks it out, rather than your having to put a lot of time, treasure and effort into ongoing promotion. Anyone wishing to know more about this is well-advised to look up “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” by Malcolm Gladwell.

For those whose “right” livelihood — remember the Eightfold Path? — may entail marketing their own skill sets to potential employers or clients, this may simply mean developing a creative way of targeting your resume to the right prospects, or finding the right headhunter agency to keep your potential for future recruitment alive.

Regarding and referring to an identified “problem,” as an “opportunity” instead, is another variation on this theme. Much of this can be considered, and somewhat lightly dismissed, as the long-lived meme of developing and sustaining a “positive mental attitude,” a concept credited to Napoleon Hill in his 1937 book “Think and Grow Rich.” This popular idea, coinciding with the birth of my older brother, became so ingrained in the zeitgeist that it is still known by its acronym: PMA. Note that the subtitle prescribes a method: thinking; and promotes an objective: growing rich; that would fall short of those in Zen. Which often claims to have no objective at all.

Another common cultural trope suggests looking at what appear to be “either-or” — mutually cancelling choices — into “both-and” potentialities; another example of converting a confrontational approach to one of collaboration and complementarity. An example would be the notion that we can either sit in meditation — or take care of business — but not both. Whereas, as we mentioned before, we can adapt aspects of the zazen posture; the breathing; and the undivided attention of Zen; to virtually any situation. As we like to say, both things can be true at once, however seemingly contradictory.

A further extension of this idea takes to a practical level Master Dogen’s admonition in Fukanzazengi—Principles of Seated Meditation:

Setting everything aside, think of neither good nor evil, right nor wrong. Thus, having stopped the various functions of your mind, give up even the idea of becoming a Buddha.  

However, when we sit, especially in the beginning as a novice, and even later, when more mature in Zen, during the beginning of each zazen session, we find we cannot really set aside all everyday concerns by sheer force of will. They keep inserting themselves into our awareness, as if they have a life of their own. Which they do. We call it the “monkey mind” — that survival-oriented, automatic and autonomic function of the mind to harangue and harry us with mostly self-critical memories and anticipatory anxiety about the future. Occasionally an “aha” or “eureka” moment occurs, in the less-inhibited frame of mind engendered in zazen, a possible solution to a given problem.

So, as an eminently practical approach to setting aside everyday concerns, and avoiding the trap of worrying about forgetting our big idea, I recommend that meditators simply keep an open notebook — paper or electronic — at their side when sitting. Then, when something important occurs out of the blue, we jot it down for later, and return to zazen. In this way, we take care of business to a moderate degree, while allowing the meditative process to go deeper and deeper. Both things can be done at the same time.

In the next segment we will delve further into this process, taking on the first of the three “dispositions” of zazen, as Matsuoka Roshi referred to them, the posture. And how it can have a halo effect upon other situations in life, in which we assume different postures, depending on the circumstances. Meanwhile, keep on sitting.

I have used the term “versus” for many years, without ever looking it up in the dictionary. It is defined as “against (especially in sports and legal use)”; or “as opposed to; in contrast to.” So when we speak of Zen versus daily life or vice-versa, we imply that somehow the practice of Zen is necessarily set ”against” the other dimensions of life. This issue comes up frequently for experienced practitioners as well as rank newcomers. This segment will broach this subject and outline some of its parameters, which will be expanded in following episodes of UnMind.

 Everything is Practice

The question often arises, after a person has been practicing zazen for some time, how, specifically, can we adapt some of the approaches and attitudes that we find on the cushion, to the rest of our day, off the cushion. Of course, this also comes up quite regularly with newcomers, to whom the standard reply is, “Don’t worry about applying Zen to your life; just apply yourself to Zen meditation. It will apply itself to your life, in a natural way. In fact, if you do try to apply Zen to your life, you will probably screw it up.”

 However, Zen is not only for everyone, as Matsuoka Roshi would often say, it is also “Anyone, anywhere, anytime Zen.” But, as I mention in my first book, “The Original Frontier” the first of many excuses that most people cite for not practicing meditation is, “I don’t have time.” To have yet one more demand on our schedules is too much of a burden, just another activity competing for our scarce resources.

 So the issue of integrating Zen practice into any and all aspects of everyday life becomes one of turning a perceived negative into a positive, converting a confrontational approach to one of collaboration and complementarity.

 From the perspective of Design thinking, this enterprise comes under the category of how to design your life in general, but particularly focusing on what we can glean from our Zen practice, finding ways to incorporate its skillful or expedient means (S. upaya) into our everyday life. This focus was prompted by the publisher of my monthly newsletter column, “DharmaByte,” who suggested commenting upon:

 Taking Zen off the cushion into daily life

Making space for practice in everyday life

Finding a balance between dharma practice and sitting

 There are several sets of contrasts we may employ to structure the discussion, such as:

- Lifestyle: Monastic versus Householder 

- Physical: Zazen versus the four Cardinal Postures

- Biological: Meditative breathing versus everyday situations

- Psychological: Shikantaza versus ordinary attention

 The comparison of monastic and householder lifestyles, for example, revolves around the common conception, or misconception, that it provides a contrast between the ideal and the practical, respectively. In other words, anything less than a monk-like existence is an undesirable compromise. Mythology surrounding the mysterious and mystical aura of the life of the monk or nun is pervasive in a culture in which its reality is exceedingly rare. How many of us actually opt for that alternative in real life, however compelling its fantasy? How many Zen followers are living an “as if” lifestyle, picturing themselves as monastics when, in reality, they are householders in monk’s clothing?

 Note: Buddhism’s historical attitude toward the householder-practitioner has always held that option in high regard, precisely because of the difficulty of maintaining balance in the everyday world of responsibilities and distractions. From the vantage point of those who have actually lived in a monastery and seen through its imaginary differences, life is mainly the same, on either side of the wall. In whatever path one chooses to walk, one will inevitably find that there are “circumstances beyond our control.”

 Further, we can extend the discussion to a more granular breakdown of time and action, such as:

- Daypart: Morning; Afternoon; Evening; Nighttime (Routines)

Daily: Meals; Shopping; Hygiene; Housekeeping; Livelihood; the Commute

- Calendar Events: Weekly; Monthly; Seasonal; Annual (Weekend, Holiday, Vacation)

- Time of Life: Infancy; Preteen; Adolescence; Young Adult; Adult; Family; Middle Age; Empty Nester; Pensioner, Retiree; Survivor; Extended Care; Hospice

- Roles & Relationships: Child; Partner; Householder; Parent; Mentor; Caregiver; Leader; 

- Lifetime: Aging; Sickness; Death

 Aha – you see what I just did there? Sneaking in that quintessential Buddhist teaching, the Three Marks of dukkha, “suffering,” at the last moment, when your head was already going up and down in agreement. But after all, this whole question goes to the original teaching of the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, Buddha’s prescription for carrying out the principles of Right Wisdom in the context of Right Conduct and Right Discipline. So perhaps our analysis will shed new light on the relevance and meaning of these ancient teachings in the context of today’s more complex social realities. Speaking of social, other dimensions for the discussion open up:

- Loved Ones & Partners; Family; Parents; Children; In-Laws; Friends; Colleagues; Associates; Strangers; Enemies

- Home; Neighborhood; Village, Town, City; State; Country; International; Global

- Media: Social; News; Infotainment; Literature

- Technology: High, Middle & Low-tech; Home & Office; Personal & Social

 Beginning with the instructions for zazen inherited from Master Dogen’s Fukanzazengi—Principles of Seated Meditation, we break them down into three areas of focus: posture, breath, and attention, or mind.

 - Posture: We can relate the upright, rigorous posture to other situations in which we “assume the posture” — at work, at rest, while driving in traffic, sitting or waiting in line, etc. Details of the posture, such as the fixed gaze, half-open eyes downcast, hands in the cosmic mudra, etc. can be resorted to in an instant. ‘Every minute Zen” becomes “Zen any minute.”

 - Breath: Consider the full breathing cycle of the natural breath, followed in zazen, with techniques of counting, etc. We can do this anytime, anywhere.

 - Attention: We can turn our attention to anything we wish, and away from distractions and annoyances. To our senses, for example: seeing, hearing, and feeling, altogether or independently, one at a time.

 - Bowing: We can practice an internal bow, with no outer signs visible, when feeling grateful, for example. Or when dealing with the “negative bodhisattvas” in our lives, bowing in their direction, thanking them for teaching us the Dharma, in a way that we do not particularly appreciate, but recognize it as the dharma, or truth, of this relationship, even though they are blissfully unaware of it. The “bad boss syndrome” is one salient example.

These are just a few of the dimensions of everyday life where our practice-experience in Zen and zazen can have a halo effect on the difficulties that arise, and a positive effect on how we handle them. Managing difficult transitions, such as changing jobs, moving our home to another location, contemplating and going through divorce, as well as losing loved ones as we age, are all sources of additional stress, on top of the wear and tear of everyday aggravations.

 In Buddha’s time, life was surely simpler, compared to the complexity of modern society. But of course the fundamental problems of life, described in his Four Noble Truths, were still the same as we find them today. Some things don’t change. And unfortunately, with all our much-vaunted advances in science and technology, developed in the interim of two-and-a-half millennia, some things have only gotten worse. We will take these issues on one at a time, and hopefully develop some skillful means for dealing with them more effectively, efficiently, and compassionately.

 This introduction to the new series has amounted to a kind of survey of where we might go with this direction. If you have any suggestions for widening the scope please send them to my email address: taiunmelliston@gmail.com

 For more on Soto Zen, its meaning and application to our modern life and practice, please check out our online and in-person schedules, and register for my Master Class at www.aszc.org.

Hell to Pay

Having sown the wind,

we are reaping the whirlwind.

Mother Nature’s pissed.

WHAT IF THIS IS HELL?

The 1995 hit song released by Joan Osborne: “What if God was one of us?” reminded me of another mythical story called “The Rabbi’s Gift.” It is a tale of a rabbi visiting and giving a talk at a Christian monastery fallen on hard times, in which he suggests that one of the few remaining monks may actually be the Messiah in disguise. The monks come to embrace this notion as a distinct possibility, a What if…surely not myself, but maybe any one of you…may indeed be the promised Second Coming? and this very idea results in the revitalization of the monastery.

 What with all the events happening in the world today, and within my living memory, the present seems to be an OCD reiteration of “the past as prologue.” This got me to thinking of another What if?: What if this Earth — and by extension, the whole present universe — is not positioned somewhere between heaven and hell, but actually is Hell, itself? Capitalized to indicate not the relative, everyday hell of good versus evil, but the Biblical realm of absolute Hell? Leaving aside for the moment the other possibilities, such as whether or not there may be a heavenly realm somewhere else, or another universe existing as a kind of purgatory — sandwiched between a paradisical slice of existence and a hell realm — as earthly existence is often conceived. Not in the subjunctive or speculative sense, but in harsh reality.

 While in the throes of redrafting my recent “DharmaByte” published monthly in our STO newsletter, to post as this podcast, she who shall remain nameless informed me that a relatively obscure but famous-in-certain-circles writer, Cormac McCarthy, had died recently, at 89 years of age. At my age the obits form an increasingly noticeable, and frequent, focus. I followed the link to the online story, discovering that I was familiar with only one of his works, one that had been made into a movie, “No Country for Old Men.” What struck a chord for me was the following:

Mr. McCarthy’s fiction took a dark view of the human condition and was often macabre. He decorated his novels with scalpings, beheadings, arson, rape, incest, necrophilia and cannibalism. “There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed,” he told The New York Times magazine in 1992 in a rare interview. “I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea.”

 It would be a “really dangerous idea” to naively trust that human nature is basically good, and will out in a benevolent way, in dealings with loved ones as well as with strangers. I have been mildly rebuked for remarking that in Zen, we do not aspire to human nature; we aspire to buddha-nature. Some might like to believe that the two are synonymous, but I beg to differ. What we see on TV every day is reflective of human nature. What Buddha discovered and transmitted is the latter, a potential for spiritual awakening that all human beings are said to have.

 But sometimes, I must confess, I wonder if it is more likely that while many, most, or even all, human beings may have buddha potential; the likelihood of their realizing it is diminishingly small, approaching zero. Especially with the world population reaching its natural limit, approaching 10 billion, with resultant strain on limited resources. I believe the reason Matsuoka Roshi insisted that “Your enlightenment will be even greater than Buddha’s” is simply because it is so much more difficult now. If you do manage to wake up as he did in simpler times, in the midst of all this distraction and tumult, it will be a big f’ing deal, to quote POTUS. Later in the report, a touch of  McCarthy humor, sorely needed in these trying times:

 His characters were outsiders, like him. He lived quietly and determinately outside the literary mainstream. While not quite as reclusive as Thomas Pynchon, Mr. McCarthy gave no readings and no blurbs for the jackets of other writers’ books. He never committed journalism or taught writing. He granted only a handful of interviews.

 Love that expression — he never “committed” journalism — as if it were a crime. I assume it to be a quote or paraphrase. Reminds me of the Tang dynasty Ch’an poem “Hokyo Zammai—Precious Mirror Samadhi” by Soto founder Tozan Ryokai that says, regarding buddha-dharma, “Just to portray it in literary form is to stain it with defilement.” There is nothing that cannot be defiled in some sense, reduced to brute vulgarity by the self-centered depredations of ignorant humankind. Our greater angels may never succeed in conquering our lesser devils. The arc of history may not, ultimately, bend toward justice. At least not human justice.

 This conjecture is not entirely alien to conventional Protestant Christianity, as I learned when participating as a panelist on an online Christian-inspired interfaith dialog originating in South Korea, with the mission of promoting world peace. Two junior Christian minister panelists, one from Africa, one from the US, went to great pains to explain, to our equally young audience, just how is it that a loving God could permit such atrocities as are daily fare on the news, and increasingly in our neighborhoods, a question that naturally comes up more and more frequently.

 They held that the doctrine of the Second Coming teaches that the Earth is currently, indeed, ruled by Satan; and that only when Christ is reborn on Earth will the Great Deceiver be defeated, and an eternal reign of peace on Earth will surely ensue.

 Some anomalies in this belief came out as well, such as that Christ redux will live a normal life after vanquishing the Devil — including marrying and fathering children — and will naturally die, when his time has come! They did not clarify whether he is expected to retire to heaven to receive his reward, letting the kids take over the planet, one supposes. But I was intrigued by the notion that this branch of theism allows for a kind of rebirth — as taught in classical Buddhism — if limited to the “one and only begotten son of God.”

 Whatever the future implications of my initial hypothesis — that we may literally be living in the real, one-and-only Hell — I think it reasonable that if we take an unblinking look at the operative conditions and emerging trends underway around the globe, for the moment ignoring their many possible causes, a telling description may emerge. A short list from the top of my head — and that you may feel free to embellish — includes, in no particular order:

 National leaders betraying their own citizens, and waging war on other nations, approving of the bombing of civilians, including children, all the while claiming some just, altruistic or noble motive.

 Religious leaders giving lip service to the gospel, benefiting from lavish lifestyles of the clergy, while abusing children and/or covering up the rapacious and predatory behavior of others.

 Charitable leaders pocketing proceeds and ripping off their donors based upon good intentions and genuinely charitable instincts of their victims.

 Government leaders at all levels promoting myths of free markets while on the take from the corrupting influence of lobbyists.

 Spouses cheating on, abusing and murdering spouses.

 Parents abusing and murdering children; children murdering parents.

 Employers abusing employees; employees murdering employers.

 Neighbors shooting neighbors; strangers killing strangers; psychotics shooting students, shoppers in stores, and partyers at festivals:  in ever-greater numbers.

I could go on, as could you, to include reemergent ethnic and racial animus. Or, my personal top three: climate change; widespread pollution; pop-up pandemics. Pick your favorite natural-cum-manmade disaster du jour. But this is getting a bit depressing.

 My basic question is: Does this not read like a fairly convincing, if not perfect, description of Hell? Or hell on Earth, at least? Isn’t it surely going to get a lot worse before it gets better? And the human race will not be satisfied with pillaging and plundering only this poor planet. We may have “slipped the surly bonds of Earth,” but instead of touching “the face of God,” we are plotting to colonize the moon, as a stepping stone to another whole, fresh planet to plunder.

 Having recently launched its 27th space ship — more than our total launches in history — the private space industry in collaboration with NASA is planning to send astronauts on a ride around the moon and back, then to land on the moon once again, as a launching pad for a future junket to Mars. As a Sci-Fi junkie, I welcome these developments. But as a citizen, I regard them with a healthy paranoia, as to the intent and eventual use, or misuse, of our enhanced powers of world domination. Please indulge me in a flight of fancy:

 Let us suppose that in the more distant future, the Mars colony has expanded to a sizable portion of the planet, while still reporting back to Mother Earth. At a certain point, what if we make another game-changing discovery. After re-establishing a breathable atmosphere, as once enshrouded Mars, we have had the luxury of time to discover that, indeed, the planet once hosted life, which is earth-shaking enough. But further, that it was in fact once occupied by an advanced civilization of intelligent beings, as imagined by an early astronomer, who discovered what he took to be the “canals” of Mars.

 Suppose that we discover evidence of historical traces, indications of civilization, long obscured by eons of accumulated debris, much as we still find traces from ancient civilizations on Earth. Like Easter Island, say, but on a planetary scale.

 We were hoping to colonize, and bring to life, a brand new world, a do-over of the Earth we have left in tatters. But Mars is revealed to be an ancient world, perhaps much older than the tenure of humanity. We now know that Mars was once similar to Earth. But some cataclysm must have occurred, wiping out all life. Or somehow, its denizens managed to blow it up.

 With climate change looming back home — triggering all manner of natural disasters no longer exactly natural, but karmic consequences of humanity on a global level — we begin to accept the terrifying possibility that we may be truly alone in the universe. And that when and where life occurs, and even when it evolves to control its means of survival, a self-destructive Achilles’ heel kicks in.

 Rather than as God’s chosen people, privileged to live in what could have been a kind of earthly paradise, as we would like to believe, we are instead doomed to be reborn, again and again throughout eternity, into this vast, hellish chiliocosm. “When will they ever learn?” on an infinite, and eternal, scale.

 WHAT IF THIS IS SAMSARA?

To wrap this up on a more positive note, the implications of Buddha’s insight led to Buddhism’s cosmology, which is not blindly optimistic, nor overly pessimistic. It places human existence on one of six planes, with three others below — the realms of animals and insects; hungry ghosts; and the “Avici hell” realm; and two others above — the realm of the Asuras or angry gods; and “Tusita heaven.”

 The model is based on various degrees of suffering or lack thereof, indicating that only human beings can come to full awakening as did Buddha, because our realm has a balance of just enough suffering, plus the ability to become aware of it as stemming from self-awareness, recognition of the problem being tantamount to solving it, the necessary antecedent to liberation. In the other five realms, there is either too much suffering to overcome, or too little to prod its denizens into the necessary realization, for transcendental awakening to occur.

 The polar extremes of existence are known as “Samsara” and “Nirvana.” It is thought to be possible, but not likely, that humanity will wake up from their deep sleep and realize the true Way. Which could be tantamount to world peace. But that this can happen does not mean that it is foreordained. It could go either way. It should be noted that this model is not taken as literal, and that whether we find ourselves in Samsara — the world of patience; or in Nirvana — the state of liberation; is entirely up to us; that is, what we individually and collectively do about it. Heaven and Hell are self-created, according to Buddhism.

 Master Dogen is said to have declared that actually, we do not go from the shore of Samsara to the other shore of Nirvana. The other shore finally comes to us. Matsuoka Roshi questioned the wisdom of spending your whole life yearning for an afterlife in a distant heaven that may or may not be there, rather than dedicating your attention to this life. Shohaku Okumura Roshi wryly commented in a dharma dialog at the Zen center, that everybody says they want to go to Nirvana. But if you go there, there is no one else there. Only bodhisattvas can go there, and they choose to stay here. So, he concluded, our mission is to transform this “ocean of Samsara” into Nirvana. I say to hell with all speculation.

 You will have to determine for yourself which approach suits you, which model is a higher approximation of your reality.

(A)theism

Theism, okay —

But not without its flip side

Both is and is not.

Continuing our discussion of addiction and theism, along with atheism, we will focus more tightly on alcohol, as one addiction amongst many. I contacted an associate we will refer to as Buddy C, who for some years has hosted a Taoist AA recovery group online, focusing on one verse of the Tao te Ching each week. I would join on one afternoon per month to add my two bits on the verse from the perspective of Zen. I interviewed Buddy regarding the twelve-step program for liberation from alcohol, which as I mentioned in the last segment, tends to receive a lot of attention in the press, though marijuana is beginning to challenge it for coverage, as it becomes legal in many states for medical and recreational purposes.

Perhaps the term “doppleganger” used in the last segment is not entirely appropriate to characterize atheism’s relationship to theism, since it means an exact double of a person or entity. Atheism is not a look-alike for theism, but one suspects that a contrarian belief has meaning only in the context of the belief being refuted. At best, it is a codependent relationship. But let us leave that debate to the experts. Let’s also set aside the broader definition of addiction as applying to all aspects of life.

For this segment I will structure my comments around Buddy’s email to me, outlining AA’s 12 steps to recovery from alcoholism. Using Buddy’s initial, in place of his last name, is in keeping with AA’s emphasis on anonymity in its approach, which is very Zen.

Buddy explained that the 12 steps are structured in 3 sections: Surrender; Inventory and Amends; and Maintenance. Beginning with surrender, the steps are expressed in the past tense, as if they are already accomplished. This calls to mind the introductory lines to Tozan Ryokai’s Ch’an poem Hokyo Zammai—Precious Mirror Samadhi:

The dharma of suchness is intimately transmitted from West to East

Now you have it preserve it well

This presumes we already have this dharma, whether we know it or not. Perhaps we already enjoy the benefits of sobriety, whether we know it or not. This posits the made-up self versus the true self, a central dilemma in Buddhist thought, and perhaps in life in general.

Let’s look at what surrender entails in AA. In Zen, the very posture zazen is one of surrender.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

Humbling, to have to admit to the fact that a mere physical substance is winning the battle. This is similar to the Repentance verse of Zen:

All my past and harmful karma

Born from beginningless greed, anger and delusion

Through body, mouth and mind

I now fully avow

Like the preceding verse, AA addresses a broader view of ourselves, rather than the specific issue of alcoholism. Zen also takes this broader perspective, asking not “Why me, Lord?” but “Why not me?”

Avowing, confession, and admission, are all the same act – fessing up to what we acknowledge as the reality of our existence, and our limited control over it. A key concept to remember is that our consequential actions, or karma, and the desires that trigger them, come with the territory of being a human being. To that degree, they are not our fault. Where we go off the rails is in how we react, or respond, to them. Buddy tells me that AA has an acronym for the main triggers of relapse when one is starting the recovery process: H-A-L-T — or “halt.” The letters stand for “hungry,” “angry,” “lonely,” and “tired.” The admonition is to stay alert to these emotional and physical states, and take action to cope with them before they have a chance to trigger craving for alcohol as our default reaction. Same for other O-C behaviors.

2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Buddy pointed out that his understanding of what Zen is pointing to seems similar. Every book in our various reading groups suggests something similar, that there is something there that we can rely on, often expressed as buddha-mind, original mind, even buddhas and bodhisattvas — and if we go there, embracing the notion that there may be something beyond our puny powers as a human being, it can be a bridge to something greater. Matsuoka roshi would often speak of this power, if not in religious terms: “If you can put your whole self into this simple act of sitting, you will gain the power to put yourself into everything you do, and become the strongest person in the world.”

Note that Sensei was not referencing a supernatural power outside oneself, but in a very real sense it does not matter what worldview, Christian or otherwise, you bring to Zen. If you persist in sitting still enough for long enough, you will inevitably return to the clarity, and sanity, of the Original Mind of Zen.

3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Buddy also took pains to make clear that  this higher power doesn’t have to mean “God” — Him or Her — which universalizes the 12-step process, taking it out of the exclusive camp of Christianity, or any and all theistic traditions.

4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Buddy made a point of emphasizing that addictive behavior is primarily based on fears: the fear of being embarrassed, by our family, for example. Or a generalized fear of not being enough, not good enough. Or a fear of being a failure, or not achieving the success we expect, about which the Tao te Ching has a compelling question: “Which is more destructive — success or failure?” Fear of not getting something we want, or losing something we have. These are all examples of living in the future, not in the moment.

The attitude in AA is to resist acting based on these fears. Buddy says the twelve steps reveal how we try to control, and attach to our expectations, arising out of stress, and anxiety that others will come to know our secrets. An example Buddy and others share, is that our son or daughter did not go to college, a wasted opportunity, a fear of shame and a source of anger about that, which affects your relationships. But this anger is misplaced; we are angry owing to our own failure to have helped the situation positively.

Similarly, Matsuoka Roshi would emphasize that the Precept of not indulging in anger does not mean that we never feel anger, which he likened to cutting water with a knife leaving no trace; but that we do not speak out of anger, which leaves a groove like cutting sand; nor act out of anger, which is like cutting stone — the scar takes forever to wear smooth again.

This inventory approach of AA recalls the so-called “mirror of Zen” — the undifferentiated awareness that reflects the good, bad, and the ugly, without discrimination. Buddy notes that the inventory includes how we have been harmed by others, as well as how we have harmed others. Recognizing the harm others visit upon us is the more natural, knee-jerk reaction to social transactions in general, at its worst engendering victim mentality. But here, we are to take a fearless look at our own part, the role we play in the transaction. This is akin to remembering the Buddhist Precepts, as we repeatedly break them. “Turning the light inward,” “peeling the onion back,” getting some relief from those fears in the process.

5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.

This confessional approach is found in all religious and psychological systems, it seems. Buddy contends that the recovery process flipped his belief system upside down. He used to rely on  his beliefs first, but now belief doesn’t matter so much — action comes first. Acting our way into right thinking, versus thinking our way into right action. Even if that action is only in the form of prayer, it begins opening your heart; you begin to change. I suppose you have to find the right person to open up to, just as you have to have an affinity with any other kind of mentor, including Zen.

6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Being “entirely ready” would necessarily entail having entirely given up on our own futile efforts. In Zen, we have to “trust in Mind,” capital “M,” relinquishing our usual dependence on discriminating mind. If there is a God, one thing is sure — it’s not you. The “higher power,” however you conceive it, has to be other than self. In this regard, Buddy maintains, everyone has their own “god language”:  the way they describe what is greater than themselves. This spiritual language comes with various dialects, much like spoken languages. Zen and AA alike encourage an openminded approach to life, including our approach to the idea of God.

7. We humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

Buddy mentioned that, for him, “God” is now experienced as “love” — love for others, as well as for oneself, I suppose. This is the message of the Metta Sutta, or “Loving Kindness Sutra,” attributed to Buddha. If you cannot in some way love yourself, you will have a difficult time truly loving someone else. In AA, self-love is realized by loving others; the act of love toward another changes us. Buddy also mentioned overcoming our character flaws. A great jazz singer I once knew said something similar: she said that if you love someone, you have to love their faults as well.

8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

A more specific, and personal inventory. Buddy pointed out that when we are addicted, we stop maturing — in ways other than physical. I said I thought that the hangover the next morning would give you a clue, but he said some alcoholics never have a hangover. Instead, they take a drink, the “hair of the dog,” so they have a bit of a buzz going at all times. This is what is called a “functioning alcoholic,” and it leads to the familiar health issues associated with alcohol poisoning.

9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Again, if you start using alcohol at the age of sixteen, you basically stay at that level of development as your body continues aging. This expression, “using,” is in reference to any drug of choice, so it is worth asking the question, when you are sober — “using to do what?” — to address the moment in which you find yourself, with all its unsatisfactoriness, one definition of Buddhism’s “dukkha” — suffering — or to escape from it. Drugs and alcohol are popular because they work — until they don’t.  

One way out of this dilemma is to start helping others immediately, according to AA’s “Big Book.” In particular, to help another alcoholic. In one case, a person volunteered to work in the “wet brain” ward of the local hospital, where long-term alcoholics are disabled, their brains having been poisoned by drinking. There is a tradition in Buddhism of monks & nuns volunteering for hospice & funeral duty for similar reasons, to be near death and dying for their own sake of facing up to their own fears.

In both cases, mental and psychological disorders are seen as a three-part disease — on spiritual, mental & physical levels. The theory is that if you take care of the spiritual — helping others is helping yourself — the other two will take care of themselves.

10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Buddy described this need for constant diligence and vigilance as analogous to the hand being unaware of the body. If we are unaware of what is happening — disconnected from the full context of our being-in-the-environment, we fall back into the fantasyland of addiction. Compassion can only be practiced in this moment. Unrealistic fears always pull us out of the moment into the past with regret, and into the future with worry, both of which are basic forms of fantasy.

11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

If and when we fall off the wagon, thinking it okay to take just one drink, the trope is that “You have a drink; the drink has a drink, then the drink has you.” The alcohol or drug immediately affects your judgment, rationalizing the second drink, and here we go again.

Zen’s model of the mind includes what is referred to as “nen” in Japanese, incorporating three levels: first-, second-, and third-level nen. As I understand the term, translated as something like “thought-moment,” the three levels in reverse order are higher thinking, middling cogitation, and basic mentation, roughly corresponding to a simple model of the brain: neocortex, midbrain and brain stem.

When we sit still enough for long enough in meditation, our conscious awareness naturally proceeds through a process of adaptation, progressing from more complex thinking, sometimes called “monkey-mind,” to a simpler focus on sensory awareness, and finally to a merging of subject and object. So I suppose it can be considered a kind of regression, back to the Original Mind.

Perhaps drugs and alcohol have a similar effect, where for a time at least, when intoxicated, we are relieved of the burden of confronting the more complex nature of existence. One difference is that meditation cannot be addictive, although you might try to use it as an escape. Good luck with that.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. 

In this regard, Buddy mentioned that “A drug is a drug is a drug,” yes — but “recovery is recovery is recovery,” no — Buddy noted that  alcohol is mentioned only once — in the first step. Different addictive substances require different strategies for withdrawal. This was confirmed by a half-dozen MDs who once attended the Zen center as part of a rehabilitation program for their variety of addictions, which they explained do not depend on the substance alone, but on its particular interaction with the metabolism and psyche of the individual.

So both programs, Zen and AA, posit a kind of spiritual awakening or insight as an intermediate goal, so to say, but we are not done yet. When Master Dogen returned from his awakening experience in China, he claimed that his life’s work was over, but that he felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. The work in the personal sphere was largely complete, but that of the social sphere was just beginning.

Similar to Zen’s expression, “Watch your feet!” Buddy says AA recommends keeping your head down, and being where your feet are, rather than relying  on thinking to reason your way out of the problem of everyday life. This mentality is likened to walking with a dim flashlight at night, where you are seeing only the next step, i.e. doing the next right thing, and being vulnerable to what arises.

In Zen, this worldview is sometimes referred to as “living by vow” — an open-ended commitment  to “being here now,” as Ram Dass titled his seminal book. In the prior segment I quoted the founder of Soto Zen in China, reminding us that “Whether teachings and approaches are mastered or not, reality constantly flows.” Get with the flow, and get over the addiction. We are not in control, but we don’t have to be out of control.

Not yet sure where the next segment will take us on our exploration of this “Original Frontier” of UnMind, but please join me on the journey.

Addiction

Addiction is real —

Born of body, mouth, and mind;

Not invented here.

In this segment of UnMind we return to a subject — if it can be reduced to a mere “subject” — that I explored publicly many years ago, when I gave a series of talks on addiction and Zen under the rubric of “sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll.” Which, at that time, seemed to cover the waterfront of possible addictions. I took the position that, from the point of view of Zen Buddhism — perhaps as distinct from more traditional Buddhism, as well as other philosophical and religious systems — “It is all addiction.” Everything, including life itself, may be regarded as a kind of addiction.

Zen teachings have this kind of all-inclusive flavor, captured in such expressions as Master Dogen’s frequent use of “All things are like this,” following one of his many apt analogies.

The premise was, and still is, based somewhat on the American Psychiatric Association’s definition of an addictive substance — referenced from the then-current edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” — which, if memory serves, defined an addictive substance as anything that, when withdrawn from an addict, results in a “significant degree of discomfort.”

Which would apply equally  to air, water, food, warmth, and all the other hierarchy of fundamental needs as outlined by Maslow, perhaps extending to social or self-actualization needs — for acceptance, status, power, wealth and privilege, and so on, and finally, the need for transcendence — which is where Zen comes in, I suppose. In the context of a panoply of needs destructive to self and others, addiction to alcohol — while of historic and epidemic proportions, and thereby attracting a lot of the attention — may not be the worst, or most socially damaging, addiction to have to cope with. It depends.

Allow me to insert a caveat here, to counter the notion that some of the more controversial ideas that may come up in this discussion may have come from my root Zen teacher, Matsuoka Roshi. He made a few comments from time to time regarding human sexuality, for example; but we did not discuss at in any length or in great detail. And while he once gave a public talk on “LSD and Zen” at the local Y in Chicago, drugs were not a big item in his lineup of topics, either. He certainly was not obsessed with either sex or drugs, and had little interest in “rock n’ roll” — by which I meant the then American, now worldwide, addiction to “living large” — the “everything, all the time” wretched excess lifestyle captured in the lyrics of the popular song, “Hotel California.”

The few fragmentary comments I recall regarding sexuality included a self-effacing claim to have been a virgin his whole life. And that he regretted never marrying because he had no one to take care of him in his old age. He also pointed out that since I was “used to this” (i.e. sexual relations), I needed it; but since he wasn’t used to it, he didn’t. One day when I visited the Chicago Temple, I found him red-faced and giggling, as my senior dharma brother, Kongo roshi, mercilessly teased and regaled him with ribald tales of the kinds of sex acts that — according to Kongo, at least — gay men engage in. Kongo had that kind of merciless and sardonic sense of humor. But he could also be very tender and sympatico, to those who knew him well. He especially relished getting Sensei’s goat, especially on something that might be embarrassing to a traditional Japanese sensibility.

On another occasion, I happened to notice a Playboy magazine in Sensei’s bedroom, where we would store the donations from the altar, so I assume he had some curiosity about sex, in those days of nascent soft pornography, and wonder what he would have thought of the endless “cabinet of curiosities” of human sexuality on display on the internet today. I once overheard him comment, somewhat dismissively, when someone mentioned human orgasm: “Ha! Orgasm in every cell.” Which I took to be, possibly, a reference to satori. I did not inquire.

I suppose that sex can become an addiction, if pursued for pleasure or reasons other than procreation — which, some religious and philosophical systems seem to insist, is its only legitimate function. There seems to be sufficient evidence that porn can be addictive — testimony to the power of our imagination, translating pixels into lust. Which Buddha is said to have called a “snake amongst the flowers.” He also claimed to have been satiated with overindulgence and dissipation prior to his spiritual quest. As Shopenhauer reminds us, sexual desire is delusional: it is on behalf of the species, not us, personally.

Adherence to the monastic code of celibacy illustrates one extreme response to what is, after all, only biology. But the antipode, the sybaritic lifestyle emulated now — by elites from Hollywood to DC, indeed globally — saturates contemporary culture. Speaking of extreme lifestyles, the famous Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa, in his 1970s classic, “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism,” warns against this kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder subtly infiltrating and infecting your own, personal practice path.

In terms of drugs, some time before Sensei delivered his talk at the Y — the text of which, incidentally, we have not been able to recover — he and I were discussing my psychedelic experiences, when he quipped, with his usual sense of humor, “Maybe you will be my LSD master, and I will be your Zen master!” He showed none of the paranoid, over-the-top, dismissive rejection that I had heard were characteristic of his contemporary Zen luminaries of the period. In his talk on LSD and Zen, he admitted that the descriptions of psychedelic experiences, as compared to those of kensho — a Japanese word for Zen insight — shared certain similarities that could not be lightly dismissed.

But he insisted that we who follow Zen do not recommend indulging in drugs, in order to render hoped-for insight, especially under uncontrolled circumstances. For one thing, an ingested chemical might trigger a reaction that the individual may not be ready for, in terms of psychic maturity, and an understanding of what it might mean. He went on to say that in Zen’s sitting meditation, with insight developing over time in a natural way, one will be fully prepared for whatever happens in the natural course of things. But again, the drug revolution was not a major area of interest for him.

If Sensei could be said to be obsessed with anything, it was the transmission of genuine Zen practice to his adopted country. In many ways, he was the archetypal “man without a country” —  no longer really Japanese, nor yet truly American, in the cultural sense. He was focused like a laser on zazen.

Allow me a brief overview of theism and atheism, and how they fit into the picture of addiction as a general principle, at least as I see it from my admittedly limited perspective. I am not apologizing here, nor being overly modest. I assume my layman’s perspective on religion to be as clear, if less informed, as anyone’s. Theological concerns are so broad and deep, yet intimately personal, that even the most deeply informed theories carry little more weight than those of the average person on the street.

To come to a conclusion about whether “God” exists or not, for example, reliance on erudition, scholarship, or any other credentialing process would have little if any relevance. By contrast, study of a tangible science, such as biology or botany, or astrophysics for that matter, would have a more rational, reliable relationship to evidence and logic, rendering some opinions more valid than others.

Let us return to addiction, and how I think it relates to conventional religion — manifested as theism, and its inverse doppleganger — atheism. This latter belief, more serious commentators than I have insisted, constitutes the strongest form of theism. Which notion, from a Zen perspective, smacks of that compelling, oxymoronic logic that most pithy Zen aphorisms share: both can be true at the same time.

As is the case with any addiction, the seductive quality of sensory pleasure or comfort associated with the drug of choice comes to bear upon one’s judgment as to whether its indulgence constitutes a positive or a negative. The addict has to wake up to the fact of being addicted, as a negative, in order to have the determination to go through withdrawal. We all have to hit bottom, and put down the shovel, before we can begin climbing out of the hole we have dug for ourselves.

Similar to the temporary effect of intoxication, belief in God can be comforting, which feeling naturally constitutes first-person validation. Karl Marx, the 19th-century German economist, remarked that religion — by which one presumes he meant all forms of theism — is the “opiate of the masses.” Quoting: “If people are to know and understand the real world, they must give up superstitious beliefs because they have a narcotic effect on the mind.” If the thought of God makes me feel warm and fuzzy, that may become prima facie evidence of the presence of God. A self-fulfilling prophecy, or tautology, proven by the all-encompassing feeling of wellbeing. This is not to deny the epiphany of the saints, however. And the testimony of Zen adepts suffers from this same lack of provability, or the inability to disprove its claims in any scientific, third-party manner.

Atheism, on the other hand, may give one the same comfy feeling as an unflagging certainty of faith in a loving God. Instead, it may provide a smug sense of superiority, especially over those who adhere to a blind faith in what may be dismissed as mere superstition; or a need to explain the unexplainable with a myth of creation; or a belief in the divine intervention of a benign deity, however contrary the evidence — of natural disasters, for example. However, if this secular insistence upon “believing in” only those things for which there can be indisputable evidence comes to dominate our worldview, many ordinary and extraordinary insights of modern existence would have to be abandoned.

Master Dogen’s frequent appeals to the compassionate consideration of the buddhas and bodhisattvas smack of this kind of theistic resort to something larger, a greater power, than oneself. And the notion of a cosmic Buddha, “Vairocana” by name, seems to differ mainly in the semantics, from the theistic concept of a creator god. None of which seems all that germane to the problem at hand, as Buddha was known to dismiss such speculation. Matsuoka Roshi questioned the wisdom of going all in on a future existence in an unproven heaven, rather than focusing on the daily life we are living.

I would submit that the teachings of Buddha were not intended as contrarian ideas to be debated against the prevailing views of the Hinduism of the time; nor would I offer them as arguments against the theistic dogmas of our time. Dogen’s teachings were certainly offered as correctives to the prevalent practices of the other Zen sects, such as the Rinzai school, apparently predominant in 13th century Japan. But this does not mean that the teachings of Buddhism are accessible only by adherence to the tenets of one school. What Zen Buddhism points at is unvarnished reality, which is not captured by an ideology or belief system. It is what it is, and coming to apprehend buddha nature directly does not depend upon the horse you rode in on. Atheism, theism, Buddhism, any “ism,” has no direct connection to the truth, as clarified in the ancient Ch’an poem Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind [insertions mine]:

Now there are sudden and gradual [schools] in which teachings and approaches arise

With teachings and approaches distinguished, each has its standards

[but] Whether teachings and approaches are mastered or not

Reality constantly flows

It is this constantly-flowing reality that reduces all teachings, belief systems, ideologies and philosophies to clumsy, humble fingers pointing at the brilliant moon.

We have not really sated our innate desire for clarity, or resolved the dilemma of inherent confusion here, but may be encouraged to reconcile ourselves to the abandonment of any reliance on comforting opinions or beliefs in our dogged pursuit of resolution of this fundamental problem of existence itself.

Please join again next time, when we will persist in our endeavor, however futile, to withdraw from our addiction to understanding that which is beyond understanding.

Returning from the political fray to the realities of daily life on Earth 2 — as the current popular trope would have it — I would like to delve into one of the teachings of Buddhism and Zen that may contribute to its misperception as being overly pessimistic. The “three marks” of dukkha, the Sanskrit word usually translated as “suffering,” or “unsatisfactoriness.”

Usually, “dukkha” is related to specific aspects of life, specifically “aging, sickness and death,” as the three characteristics of all sentient existence. From the Tricycle web site we find:

The Buddha taught that all phenomena, including thoughts, emotions, and experiences, are marked by three characteristics, or “three marks of existence”: impermanence (anicca), suffering or dissatisfaction (dukkha), and not-self (anatta). These three marks apply to all conditioned things—that is, everything except for nirvana. According to the Buddha, fully understanding and appreciating the three marks of existence is essential to realizing enlightenment. (It is a schema that is accepted in both Theravada and Mahayana schools, but more emphasized in the former.)

Here we find a much broader, less personal definition of the three than “aging, sickness and death,” but as human beings, we are naturally more concerned with how they apply to our wellbeing most immediately and intimately, than how they function as universal principles. It seem to me that much of the chaos and uncertainty that we are currently witnessing in the social sphere is animated by the unsuccessful resolution of our personal relationship to these three marks, along with the built-in resistance to embracing them fully, with any measure of equanimity.

As an octogenarian, I can personally testify to the inevitability of the first two, and their power taking precedence over all other dimensions of daily life, in due time. All you have to do is live long enough to find out for yourself. However, the Buddha apparently came to this conclusion, or confrontation, relatively early in life, in his mid-thirties, when we would expect him to be in the prime of life, though 2500 years ago, life expectancy was not what it is today.

Let us consider each of them one at a time, from a problem-definition and problem-solving  perspective. In passing, let me recall that the least emotionally-laden definition of dukkha is, simply, “change.” Nothing personal about it.

Buddhists may be said to believe these teachings, rather than “believing in” them, as some of the online commentary would have it. As with all of the “compassionate teachings,” one’s own first-person, experiential evidence will drive home the validity and veracity, as well as the long term priority, of these findings and conclusions of the Buddha. The only question becomes how – how do we comport ourselves in the context of these dominant aspects of our existence?

The existence of suffering itself Buddha said we are to fully understand. And from the above quote, that understanding must of necessity begin with recognizing and appreciating these three most immediate considerations of life, beginning with aging, or impermanence. It does not help much to place our own impermanence in the context of universal impermanence. Misery may love company, but not that much.

It might help to consider the question, When does aging begin? At the moment of birth? At the moment of conception? The current flap over in-vitro fertilization – as part of the larger ethical and ideological debate around all things related to birth control, or the larger category of reproductive health in general – illustrates that aging is actually well under way before conception. The eggs and sperm involved have limited viability, aging out of their own, micro-world shelf lives. 

Owing to a welcome assist from modern medicine, many of us can expect to live increasingly long lives, with notable exceptions in the form of further life-threatening causes and conditions attributed to the very success, and lack of due diligence, of the human species.

In Zen, we hear various expressions such as “every moment reincarnation,” from my teacher, for instance. We read Master Dogen’s framing of birth and death as “expression(s) complete this moment.” Buddha himself was said to have mentioned something to the effect that, owing to impermanence, there must be permanence. His monks were said to have been happy to hear this. One of the theories that I have read, attempting to explain the success of Buddhism spreading throughout history in its countries and cultures of origin, is that Buddha’s followers were so relentlessly happy.

So there is a kind of pervasive optimism in Zen and Buddhism, which is hard to explain in the context of impermanence and aging, let alone sickness and death. But just consider, in your own mind for a moment, the possibility that there were no aging. That we would all remain “forever young,” in the memorable phrase from the Bob Dylan tune. What would be the implications, both long- and short-term, of this reversal of biology?

What if we did not age? (We can leave the discussion of illness and dying to upcoming segments.) Buddha rejected such speculation as ultimately futile, if taken seriously, but here, we want to treat it as a mere “thought experiment,” for the sake of shedding light on the actual causes and conditions of our existence, no harm no foul.

In design circles this is a recognized process, called “synectics,” engaging in the seemingly irrelevant on the chance that it might turn out to be relevant. It is related to “Hegel’s Dialectic,” seeing the existing “thesis,” a present manifestation of reality as impermanent, enabling our recognition and even ability to predict the emergence of the “antithesis” on the event horizon. The model goes on to predict the merging of thesis and antithesis into the new thesis, which arises, abides, changes and ultimately decays and disappears with the next cycle. And so on, and on, forever.

Not coincidentally, this terminology of “merging” is used discerningly by Master Dogen in his envisioning the process of Zen realization in Shobogenzo Bendowa, if memory serves (emphasis mine):

In stillness, mind and object merge in realization

and go beyond enlightenment

If we consider aging in this startling, single-point reflection, how does that look? Buddha says, toward the end of his First Sermon:

My heart’s deliverance is unassailable

This is the last birth

Now there is no more becoming

If indeed it is possible to come to the end of “becoming,” is that tantamount to the end of aging? Is the essence of what Buddha and Dogen realized is that everything “else” is obviously aging and becoming something else? And must include the one observing the change. And that it has always been thus, from the very beginning. So what could go wrong?

Just consider: If the very conditions that we all naturally worry about – all too often to an excessive, obsessive degree – have always obtained in the universe, long before our birth in this lifetime, and likely to persist and pertain long after our death; how can there be anything fundamentally amiss? Not that it’s the best of all possible worlds, thank you Pangloss. But really, as a design-build professional, I can fantasize that I was in charge, and made the primordial decisions that determined that, if there is to be sentient existence, what will that look like? How do I make that work?

But most ordinary human beings do not have that kind of hubris. They palm the fundamental questions off to a divine entity, the wizard’s intent hidden behind the curtain of appearances. We simply accept the givens, try to understand and embrace them, and go from there. But there must have been a “before” – before the Big Bang, or the alternative Bounce. There must have been something – the “sound of silence,” and maybe nascent thought — preceding the “Word.” But then, all heaven and hell breaks loose, and here we are. In this moment.

None of this explains anything, of course. Whatever framework we have been given to comprehend the brute fact of existence was totally made up by others. You learned that. And it can be unlearned. Zazen seems mainly a process of unlearning what we think.

The very idea and ideal of longevity has only one value in this context, according to my feeble grasp of Zen’s teachings: A better chance to wake up!

In witnessing – or better, contemplating – aging, I am oft reminded of the unforgettable couplet from musical Zen master Dylan:

Ah but I was so much older then

I’m younger than that now

My sense of the relevance of aging and impermanence in the context of meditation and Dharma teachings is that, like the questionable linearity of the so-called “arrow of time” in theoretical quantum mechanics, taking the view that time is passing in a direction may be entirely arbitrary. What we may perceive — and more problematically, what we may interpret — as aging, may indeed be true, but only half the reality, as with all dualistic thinking. Perhaps we are growing younger at the same time, disencumbering ourselves with learned inhibitions, rules and regulations that no longer apply, as we mature to embrace emptiness.

My idle conjecture on aging represents yet another variation on the theme of thinking independently and acting interdependently. This bears repetition: Sitting in zazen with the Zen community, we are nonetheless sitting alone. Any time we sit alone in zazen, we are joining the larger community of Zen practitioners. Somewhere in the world – at any time, day or night – someone is sitting in Zen meditation. We need flexibility of mind to approach Zen practice in this nondual sense, outside of time and space.

In the next UnMind segment, we will take up the more abrupt, if no more tangible than aging, mark of “sickness,” which for some reason is not called out as such in the early translation. Maybe the prevalence of illnesses of all kinds was so much a part of daily life that it did not emerge as a perceivable isolate in the social awareness of the time.

Meanwhile, as Buddha himself suggested, don’t take my word for any of this. Check it out for yourself, on the cushion, and off.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

Buddha Nature

Not what we think, but —

We fall into confusion.

Back to the cushion!

We left off last time with a discussion of the relative reality of human, versus corporate, entities — which may seem a bit far removed from the concerns of Zen practice. But, as Matsuoka Roshi would often say, “Civilization conquers us!” One of the ways that so-called civilization interferes with our lives on a daily basis, to such a degree that we become inured to it — “death and taxes” being the only sure things in life — is the imposition of an interface with corporate entities everywhere we turn.

One connotation of my dharma name, “Taiun,” or “Great Cloud,” is that, like a big cloud in the sky, there are no barriers anywhere. This is what comprises the aspirational aspect of a Zen name – that I should find no barriers in daily life. Don’t need to tell you how that is working out so far.

Human entities are naturally given special status in the hierarchy of sentient beings by most philosophical and religious systems, such as the reification of the Self, the immortal Soul of Christianity, and the Hindu equivalent, the Atman. Corporate entities have recently been endowed with personhood by the Supreme Court, which has exacerbated the friction between the two types of entities struggling for dominance in governments around the globe.

My main concern here is that we human members of the harmonious communities (S. sangha) of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and the Silent Thunder Order avoid confusion as to our priorities in serving the sangha. One of which is the natural tendency to reify the imputed needs of the corporation itself — e.g. to survive in perpetuity — over the needs of the sentient beings that it is incorporated to serve. Let us entertain an “if-then” exercise to examine whether we may be sliding down this particular slippery slope:

IF:

1. You find yourself obsessing over the succession of the leadership of ASZC or STO,

THEN: you are getting distracted from your own practice.

2. You are disappointed because you feel under-appreciated for your efforts on behalf of ASZC or STO or both,

THEN: I have two suggestions for you. One: welcome to the club. Two: remember that you are supporting the organizations because they are propagating Zen practice. And in Zen there is “no self, nor other-than-self.” So your actions, and those of other members, are neither entirely selfish nor unselfish.

3. You feel that you are engaging in activities and making sacrifices for the sake of someone else in the sangha, such as myself,

THEN: Please stop. As Master Dogen reminds us, you should not even imagine that you are practicing Zen for your own sake, let alone the sake of others. You should practice Zen “for the sake of Buddhism itself.” But even this construction reifies Buddhism, or Zen, as if there is such a thing, and you alone have to protect it. The great Master also cautioned his followers not to call it “Zen.” Zen is a term some ancient person made up. Dogen reminded all that this practice is, basically, Buddhism.

But “Buddhism,” like Zen, is also a made-up term. Buddha Shakyamuni was not a “Buddhist,” any more than Jesus Christ was a “Christian.” Buddha comes from a root word that means “awake.” “Buddha” means the “fully awakened one.” What he taught, and what his followers promulgated and propagated — in a largely Hindu cultural context, where one imagines they encountered considerable resistance — in time came to be called Buddhism. Which, like anything and everything else, is not exempt from its own teachings of impermanence, imperfection, and insubstantiality.

4. IF —You are engaging others in the community, expressing your personal doubts and frustrations as to how the sangha is functioning, including concerns about the competence of its leadership, without bringing these concerns to that leadership,

THEN: You may be fomenting confusion and resultant disharmony in the sangha. Which is the closest thing to a cardinal sin in Buddhism.

One of Siddhartha Gautama’s apparently endless cohort of cousins, named Devadatta, was jealous of Shakyamuni’s status and the lavish support he received from patrons, as the story goes, and actually attempted to have Buddha assassinated. Yet Buddha predicted that Devadatta would eventually realize buddhahood.

None of these behaviors are irretrievable, and no one is irredeemable in Buddhism, but all of us, and especially those in positions of leadership in the sangha, are called upon to act with discernment and an overabundance of caution to ensure that we are embracing the broadest perspective, taking the long view, and not confusing the corporate entity with the human entities that embody it.

These are special, and especially niggling, concerns that arise in the public propagation of Zen, in particular in America, where the corporate versus individual conflict is on display on a daily basis. In this context we once again return to our mission to aspire to buddha-nature over human nature.

IT IS BUDDHA NATURE:

1. To recognize the limits of human nature.

BUT: Buddhism proposes that we are not limited to the constraints of our apparent human nature, but capable of awakening to our original buddha-nature through the Three Bodies, or trikaya: this biological, or Transformation body — nirmanakaya; becoming aware of the Essence body — dharmakaya, resulting in the manifestation of the Joy body — the samboghakaya.

This model of the true body is just a model, of course, and accepting this idea is of-a-piece with the embrace of the Three Minds — sanshin: the Magnanimous —  daishin; the Nurturing — roshin; and the Joyous — kishin. That the body-mind of buddha-nature is already the reality goes without saying. Waking up to it is another matter.

2. It is buddha nature to find that all groups of people and individuals are originally like-minded.

BUT: Causes and conditions, such as ideologies and class divisions, bring about differentiation, a kind of social evolution.

3. It is buddha nature to realize that “In this world of suchness there is neither self nor other than self” and that “To come into harmony with this reality just simply say, when doubt arises, ‘Not two.’”

BUT: It is natural to encourage others by expressing appreciation for their generosity.

4. It is buddha nature to manage personal associations with others to meet their needs.

BUT: We cannot be 100% responsible for the lives or behavior of others, we can only do our best. You can lead a horse to water, but…

5. It is buddha nature to remember that nothing lasts forever.

BUT: Hegelian logic assures us that the existent thesis will be challenged by an antithesis, and the two will merge in synthesis, evolving the new thesis, endlessly.

6. It is buddha nature to hold an aspiration to perfecting the paramitas rather than an expectation of perfection.

BUT: An aspiration is by nature open-ended — unknown — expressed as a vow to persist in spite of doubts; whereas an expectation is defined as a goal or objective.

Again, I could go on. It is buddha nature to relinquish any attempt to control the uncontrollable. And to blame ourselves rather than others. Disharmony between others, as well as ourselves, is usually the result of unintended conflict between two points of view — where each person is attempting to defend the sangha, or the dharma, as they see fit. It is buddha nature to see the opposing views as complementary, so that the path to compromise and resolution becomes apparent.

This discussion of human- and buddha-nature is not complete. It will be completed only in your own experience with sangha, and your embrace of buddha-dharma. Good luck with your pilgrim’s progress.

Human Nature

It’s not what we think.

We must kill to stay alive —

How “humane” is that?

One of the many modern cultural memes that Zen challenges — as well as any unbiased reading of history would, for that matter — is the hopeful notion that human nature is necessarily a good thing. We often use the term “humane” with this connotation, as defined by the dictionary:

• having or showing compassion or benevolence: regulations ensuring the humane

treatment of animals. 

• inflicting the minimum of pain: humane methods of killing.

Ironic, wouldn’t you say, that the very word that connotes the highest degree of compassion or benevolence is commonly defined by our method of killing — mostly livestock but also wild animals. This at least recognizes one truism of Buddhism: that there is no life without death, and that to live it is necessary to kill, if not intentionally. That is, our very breath kills untold numbers of microbes with every cycle of inhalation and exhalation, relentlessly. Then there’s that dreaded occasion when we have to put down a beloved pet or working beast to put it out of its misery.

We like to think of ourselves, as human beings, as the acme of evolution — or God’s greatest creation — actually formed in His or Her image. On the other hand, human beings are the root cause of all, or at least most, of the unnecessary suffering in the world. I came across an old saying attributed to Zen, illustrated with the frowning and grinning masks of ancient theater, saying something like “Waking in the morning, he is an angel, or a devil — depending on circumstance!” So it is recognized in Zen that it is not just what we do personally, but the interface with the various causes and conditions surrounding us, that shapes our lives on a daily basis.

Usually when we speak of human nature, it is with a positive association with the highest good that human nature is capable of achieving. The saints of theism, as well as the Ancestors of Buddhism, are held up as exemplars of this achievement, through their altruistic behavior and self-sacrifice for the sake of others. It is true that they were all very human, of course, although the teaching style of a standout Zen Master like Rinzai, if we are to believe the stories, sometimes looks inhumane on its surface. The history of Zen is replete with stories of students who recognized the “grandmotherly kindness” of their former teacher in retrospect, only after they had moved on to another teacher, or independently experienced Zen’s insight.

Before delving into an examination of what we mean by “buddha-nature,” let’s consider some aspects of what we refer to as human nature, but from the perspective of Zen. Note that the “buddha” in buddha-nature is not capitalized. This indicates we are considering the innate potential of all human beings to recover their original Mind, and not the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, which would be capitalized.

WHAT IS HUMAN NATURE?

Let me list some of the dimensions of human nature that seem to me to be connected to Zen practice:

IT IS HUMAN NATURE:

1. To regard ourselves as existent entities.

BUT: According to Zen, we human beings are not self-existent entities. Nothing else is, either. Including corporate entities, such as the Zen Center corporation.

2. It is human nature to want to join like-minded groups of people.

BUT: The Zen community, or “sangha,” like any group entity, is evanescent, impermanent. This is why we refer to and visualize the sangha as a “cloud” (J. un), constantly evaporating and recondensing over time, as people come and go.

3. It is human nature to hope to be appreciated for our contributions to a cause.

BUT: It is somewhat inappropriate to express appreciation to anyone for what they do for Zen or Buddhism, as there is no conventional “self” in it. It is normal to do so in polite society, but Zen, while not antisocial in character, is somewhat asocial – the norms and memes of society are called into question, subject to examination in meditation.

4. It is human nature to expect our associations to meet our personal needs.

BUT: Our best laid plans often take an ugly turn. Because a corporate entity is populated by individuals who have their own agendas, one’s personal perspective may have to be set aside for the overall, long-term benefit of the group. We practice patience with this.

5. It is human nature to hope that our favored institutions continue in perpetuity.

BUT: Nothing continues in perpetuity. Never has, never will. Eiheiji, the monastery established by Master Dogen in 13th Century Japan, still stands, however.

6. It is human nature to feel disappointed when our expectations are not met.

BUT: We practice caution against developing unrealistic expectations of Zen, both of our personal practice and our social community, or sangha.

I could go on. It is human nature to try to control the uncontrollable. And to blame others when we fail to do so. No matter how much harmony we are able to foster within the sangha, there are going to be periods of disruption and disharmony, brought about by individual personality issues as well as external influences. We do not discuss the faults of others, but we do find it necessary to discuss their behavior from time to time, especially if it is disruptive.

THIS IS WHY WE ASPIRE TO BUDDHA NATURE

“Buddha nature” simply means “awakened” nature. What we awaken to is largely the unreality of those things we take to be real, including corporate entities such as the Zen center. Its leadership, however, in the form of its abbot or abbess, teachers, members, and board of directors, has to be regarded as more real than the constructed entity. Corporations can do harm, or good, as a result of decisions taken by the persons comprising their membership. Corporate entities may be very convincing, but they are unreal in the larger context, especially when taking the longer view of Buddhism’s teachings of impermanence, imperfection and insubstantiality, as applying to all apparently existent entitles.

A corporate entity does not and cannot carry out the mission of the organization. Only living persons can do so, with an assist from nonliving entities, such as print publications, audio-visual presentations, and the physical plant housing the meditation hall (J. zendo). This is pointed to in a stanza toward the end of Master Dogen’s Jijuyu Zammai—Self-fulfilling Samadhi (emphasis mine):

Grass trees and lands which are embraced by this teaching

together radiate a great light

and endlessly expound the inconceivable profound dharma

Grass trees and walls bring forth the teaching for all beings

common people as well as sages

and they in accord extend this teaching for the sake

of grass trees and walls

Note that the “walls” are those constructed by humans to house the zendo, providing a “place conducive to practice,” as Ven. Achok Rinpoche defined one meaning of “dana,” generosity, while giving a talk at the Zen center. From this it is clear that humankind — and the works of humankind — are not separate and apart from buddha-dharma, and in fact promote and support the propagation of “the realm of self-awakening and awakening others,” another of Dogen’s phrases.

What we refer to as “Soto Zen,” or “Dogen Zen,” is different from all the other entrees on the great smorgasbord of meditations on offer in our culture which, as we know, values variety of selection over all else. What Buddhism teaches as its worldview is starkly different from the various religions and ideologies, as well as many of the scientific worldviews, dominant in America. For more on this, check out my latest book, “The Razorblade of Zen.”

A little background on our corporate history may shed some light on why, in spite of the ultimately nonexistent nature of the corporation, we incorporated ASZC and STO. ASZC was incorporated in 1977 to facilitate the mission of meeting the demand for genuine Zen practice, in particular its uniquely simple and direct meditation, and to provide the necessary interface with other corporate entities such as city, county, state, and federal government, including the IRS. The laws of the democratic republic in which we operate allow supporters to deduct donations, if qualified.

STO was incorporated in 2011 because the stress and strain on the board of directors and committees of the ASZC had become too much to handle with the growth of our network of affiliates, which were meeting the increasing demand for Zen practice, and the growing awareness of ASZC and STO as meeting that demand in a uniquely user-friendly manner, stressing the practicality and best practices of householder Zen.

BUT:

We should not be confused as to the reality or unreality of the corporate entities we have “established.” They are no more real than any other corporate entity, though we may feel that their existence as such is much more necessary than most, based, as they are, on real human needs.

In spite of the “Citizens United” ruling of the Supreme Court, corporations are not persons and should not have the “rights” accorded to human beings. All beings are capable of doing harm; corporate entities survive their human components and thus become capable of extending the harm, or good, they do to future generations. Real persons fortunately pass away, but the harm they do also lives on long after them, to paraphrase Mark Antony.

In the next segment we will continue examining human versus buddha nature, in the context of all such constructions as corporate or personal constructions of the mind. Meanwhile, please focus on the personal over the corporate, emphasizing your personal practice in zazen over your role in the sangha.

Your zazen may lead

To a kind of gravitas —

But it’s only Zen.

* * *

“Gravity,” the John Mayer song that won a Grammy in 2005, begins with the lines:

Gravity is working against me
And gravity wants to bring me down

Truer words, as we say. One of the four fundamental forces, as defined by Google:

There are four fundamental forces at work in the universe: the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force. They work over different ranges and have different strengths. Gravity is the weakest but it has an infinite range.

Gravity is said to be the constant teacher, for a toddler who is just learning to stand. Every time they finally get their balance — boom! — they fall down again. With repetition, they finally learn how to maintain balance even while walking, which has been described, dynamically, as falling forward and catching yourself with your feet.  Some animals, like horses, are born ready to walk, with a little help.

With repetition over time, we adapt to gravity and lose awareness of it, until we don’t. Zen’s walking meditation, kinhin in Japanese, is a bit like learning to walk all over again. We raise our elbows to shoulder-level to act as outriggers for balance. If you find yourself losing your balance from time to time, you are doing kinhin correctly. Like a tightrope walker, we become more aware of the precariousness of our balance. We also become sensitive to the long-term effects of gravity on our body shrinking with age. I have lost about 3 inches so far, my own personal version of the incredible shrinking man.

When we feel we are losing our balance, an increasingly common and dangerous issue as we age, we experience a sense of dizziness, or vertigo. If we actually fall down, we experience the acceleration of gravity, with the unpleasant slam of our body mass on the ground. But typically we are unaware of the constant pull of the gravitational field. What we refer to as “weight” is the measure of the mass of an object, such as our body, in thrall to the gravitational mass of the Earth. It is said to be about six times that of the moon. One would assume from this that for every planetary or other celestial body, the mass of the being’s body, moving within the orbit or g-force field generated by the mass of the larger body, would determine the relative weight of that being, in that particular context. So what, you say?

Consider that in zazen, because we sit still for relatively long periods of time in an upright posture, our relation to gravity is relatively constant. So the ability to once again feel gravity as a constant comes into play. It becomes obvious when we are meditating that we are out of balance, leaning one way or the other, rather than sitting upright, which ordinarily we do not feel, having adapted to our usually crooked posture. This is why we do the rocking motion as we are settling in, to find our center in the field of gravity, like a metal filing lining up on a magnet.

Rising for walking meditation, we become acutely aware of moving in gravity, at an excruciatingly slow pace. And when we return to the cushion, we feel the immersive embrace of gravity, as we once again settle into the zazen posture. As we enter into deeper physical samadhi — equipoise or equilibrium — the forces of gravity and their impact on the various parts of the body even out, resulting in a sense of effortlessness, even a sensation of floating. Our sense of time undergoes a similar reorientation to that of our position in space, which will be a subject for a future segment of UnMind.

Falling back to gravity for the time being: If you picture yourself sitting on the globe of the earth, like a tetrahedron perched on a sphere, you can see that the peak of the tetrahedron would lie on a radius that runs to and from the center of the planet to the crown of your head. This illustrates what Matsuoka Roshi called “sitting-mountain-feeling,” which he used to indicate how one knows when the posture is perfectly balanced. He also described it as if the top of your skull is pressing against the ceiling. Extremely solid and stable. Of course, the human body is more complex than a geometric figure. But when all the bones of the skeleton are arrayed properly, and the tension or turgor in the musculature membrane is evenly distributed, it feels as if the body is composed of one material throughout — wood, stone, or metal. You have become a statue, so to speak, with gravity pulling down on you from below, atmospheric pressure bearing down from on high.

Gravity is a central operating principle of the universe, according to the science of (astro)physics; Dharma & karma may be said to be operating principles of reality, according to the teachings of Buddhism. Note that I said “teachings,” not “beliefs.” Buddhism is not a system of beliefs, but rather what we may call conjectures, concerning the true causes and conditions of our existence. One of which — a big one — is gravity. The most difficult-to-embrace aspect of the definition quoted above is its imputed “infinite range.” That it is the weakest of the fundamental four is a bit slippery as well. It certainly seems that it would have to be stronger than forces operating only at a microscopic level, and only at very close range. But gravity can not overcome these other micro-forces, fortunately for us.

It may be appropriate here to interject another parallel I find between science and Zen, according to my poor understanding of both: Even Einstein did not “understand” gravity; even Buddha did not “understand” Dharma, or karma. These principles, or phenomena — again, not beliefs — are beyond understanding, in any ultimate sense. This is not merely a semantic quibble, but goes to the essence of the concepts of gravity, Dharma, and karma. They are real beyond concept, in some sense, but also, in their ubiquity, not really “findable.” Like most fundamental phenomena, they cannot be isolated.

Let’s entertain a thought experiment regarding gravity, no offense to the great Master physicist. Who, by the way, was known to sit in a chair holding his pen, and drift off into a kind of meditative reverie, which he described as not exactly thinking, but “visceral” in nature. At a certain point he would lose consciousness, dropping the pen, which would wake him up. Then he would retrieve the pen and start over again. This sounds, by the way, similar to Hakuin Zenji’s “Naikan Tanden” healing exercise, with which you may be familiar, designed to help you get a good night’s sleep, and which we sometimes practice on overnight retreats.

When you are lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, picture yourself floating in space, safe and sound on your mattress. Once you can feel your whole body’s position, or proprioception, imagine that your bed suddenly disappears. What happens? You instantly fall to the floor with a thud, subject to Newton’s second law, the acceleration of gravity, at 9.8 meters or 32 feet per second squared, or “per second per second.” So the thud, accelerating only a couple of feet from the disappearing mattress to the floor, is already considerably more than your body mass. That’s going to hurt.

Now if you imagine the floor disappearing as well, you fall into the basement or crawl space, at a proportionately greater acceleration, and corresponding thud, or splat. So while we may perceive that we are relatively free of gravity, it is a form of delusion, based on sensory adaptation. Falling off a cliff, we would impact a series of surfaces with greater and greater force, as we approached the bottom. We are constantly in danger of being flattened like Wile E. Coyote, or sucked into a sinkhole or quicksand, if we step off the edge of whatever surface is between us and the slippery slope of the gravity sink.

“All things are like this,” again quoting one of Master Dogen’s favorite and frequent constructions. What we are actually feeling, at all times, is the pull and drag of gravity, along with our body’s resistance and adaptation to it. When we sit in zazen, a kind of reverse-adaptation sets in, where we become sensitized to the fact that we have adapted to sensory input, including most especially gravity, the most constant and unforgiving force acting upon us, but also a panoply of others, such as the effect of light and dark with the daily cycle of revolution of the planet. The latest fad in the meditation and retreat business, made famous by none other than Aaron Rogers, the celebrity professional football quarterback, consists of immersion in total darkness — requiring absolute shielding of the subject from any natural light. Zen instead recognizes that there is no need to go to that extreme, as indicated in the Ch’an poem by Master Sengcan: Sandokai—Harmony of Sameness and Difference:

In the light there is darkness

But do not take it as darkness

In the dark there is light

But do not see it as light

Perhaps the attraction of immersion in darkness can be understood from a Zen perspective, as suggested in a later Ch’an poem, Hokyo Zammai—Precious Mirror Samadhi:

In darkest night it is perfectly clear

In the light of dawn it is hidden

These translations always beg the question: What, exactly, is referred to as “it”? It, of course, is the meaning and effect of the practice of Zen, its raison d’etre. It is also our reason for being, from a deeply philosophical perspective. Some great sage lost to my memory said something to the effect that knowing this “it” in the morning, it is okay to die in the evening. Master Dogen wrote, when returning from his sojourn in China, that his life’s work was finished. So this “it” is IT – is everything, the only thing in life truly worth pursuing. Which brings up the principle of gravity in another context: what is the most grave aspect, or dimension, of life? Declaring death to be the answer may be true, but a bit glib.

In Zen, as in most philosophical, religious schools of thought, and even in professions, such as medicine, we find precepts – fundamental tenets that are expressed as the wisdom and working principles of the field. In Buddhism, there are ten such that are referred to as “grave” precepts, those that determine or define key parameters of the life of a Bodhisattva or Buddha, not to mention that of a lowly follower of Zen. What is grave about them is that they address the most fraught dimensions of life and behavior, such as killing, stealing, lying, and so forth. For which everyone already harbors some kind of precept, though it may not rise to the level of conscious intent and awareness, as in Zen.

One final thought on gravitas, which, being a human perception operative mainly on the social level, does not carry the weight of gravity — no pun intended — and so is undeserving of the same degree of consideration. My only comment is that through the practice of meditation — that is, of the real zazen — it may appear that you develop a kind of gravitas, charisma, or magnetic personality, a depth of seriousness that others find intriguing or attractive, even before you have any real insight into the truth of Zen. Don’t let it go to your head. It is only a side-effect of zazen.     

Not sure where the next segment will take us. Down another rabbit-hole in the wonderland of Zen and Design Thinking, for sure. Maybe the space-time thing. And maybe this time we will come out on the other side of the wormhole.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little

You can analyze

Anything into nothing —

Apt analogy.

* * *

In this segment of UnMind we continue exploring the intersection of Design Thinking and Zen praxis. That last 10-dollar word we may take up in future under “Praxis & Practice.” They are not exactly synonymous. But for now I want to focus our attention on analogy, its usage in Zen teachings, and its reliance on the faculty or process of analysis, one of the most powerful tools of the human mind. In his seminal teaching, Genjokoan—Actualizing the Fundamental Point, Master Dogen makes a point of pointing out that he is using analogy in a very intentional way, to get his point across. After a long and varied passage — using firewood and ash to illustrate the relativity of time by analogy, then pivoting to the all-too-human experience and perception of birth and death as analogous to firewood and ash, followed by the famous section on the moon reflected in a dewdrop, further citing oceans and mountains as exemplifying the knowns and unknowns of duality versus nonduality, finally pausing to declare that “All things are like this” — he launches into  an even longer passage on birds and fishes in their respective elements, ending with:

If the bird leaves the air it will die at once

If the fish leaves the water it will die at once

Know that the water is life and the air is life
the bird is life and the fish is life

Life must be the bird and life must be the fish

After this charming semantic reversal of conventional causality — citing life itself as the primary cause — he affirms that he is purposefully using analogy:

It is possible to illustrate this with more analogies

Practice-enlightenment and people are like this

“All things are like this” narrowed down to the nature of practice-enlightenment and people. He continues, finally arriving at the point of this series of analogies, addressing the “So what?” question:

Now if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before moving in it

this bird or this fish will not find its way or its place

When you find your place where you are practice occurs

actualizing the fundamental point

When you find your way at this moment practice occurs

actualizing the fundamental point

So the point of all this analogizing is to bring the person listening to the point of actualizing the fundamental point of Zen practice in their own space — “where you are” — and time — “at this moment.”

Note that “practice occurs”: it is not something that we do, not something that we can actually do. The etymology of “praxis” hints at this:

late 16th century: via medieval Latin from Greek, literally ‘doing’, from prattein ‘do’.

Just as Dogen points out, in Zazenshin—Lancet of Zazen, that the clarity of our original mind is “actualized within non-thinking” and “manifested within non-interacting,” here he indicates that the main thing we practice in Zen, in the form of zazen, is ultimately a form of “non-doing.” This idea also finds resonance with the first major Ch’an poem from the 7th Century, Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind:

No comparisons or analogies are possible

In this causeless, relation-less state

Take motion in stillness and stillness in motion

Both movement and stillness disappear

When such dualities cease to exist

Oneness itself cannot exist

To this ultimate finality no law or description applies

It is difficult to embrace the idea that any so-called state of awareness would have no cause. It seems obvious that something, some set of circumstances, must be determining, to some degree, the state of mind we are in at all times. We might want to altogether abandon, or at least challenge, usage of the term “state” to identify a level of awareness on this order of comprehension. The apprehension of nonduality — or duality within nonduality and vice-versa — may involve a kind of realization that cannot even be regarded as a form of awareness. Here words fail.

Amongst the words that no longer have any real relevance or resonance, when the above kind of conclusion comes about as a result of Zen training, is the term “Zen.” At this point it seems we have come to the end of analysis, in that the utility of analytical thinking has become the futility of relying on a kit of tools that have reached the limit of their usefulness. The spirit of inquiry now returns to a more primitive or primeval level of sheer observation, in which language and labels no longer stick. My teacher described this aspect of Zen as something “round and rolling, slippery and slick.”

A well-known female Zen teacher named Toni Packer (1927-2013) was known for turning down the offer to succeed Philip Kapleau Roshi, one of the first generation of formally recognized American Zen priests and author of an early classic, “The Three Pillars of Zen,” one of the first Zen books I remember reading. I became aware of Ms. Packer when a young man who had been practicing with her community visited us in Atlanta back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, if memory serves.

He began questioning the way we were doing things, from our style of walking meditation to our exposition of the dharma, based his exposure to Packer’s approach to taking the Zen out of Zen, and who had written a book that he mentioned. I asked to read the book, which surprised him; apparently he assumed that I was set in my ways. After reading the book, I suggested he give a guest talk to the group, since he felt so strongly about the matter. During the talk, in which he ran down the litany of all the challenges to our way of practicing, the reaction in the room was, in effect, that he seemed to think he was the only person who had thought of these seeming contradictions, when in truth every one listening had been there, done that, in the history of their practice. Ironically, the whole point of Packer’s book was to admonish the reader to avoid falling into comparative thinking.

Comparative thinking is fundamental to analysis itself. It is difficult to imagine any kind of analytical process that does not involve some form of comparison. But if you arrogate to yourself the ability to judge the practice of others, and especially to challenge established communities of Zen practitioners, this is to make a fundamental error, a type of category error. It presupposes that the efficacy of Zen and the method of zazen depends upon the particular performative rituals and the environmental setting that surround and hopefully support the central practice of meditation.

If the effect of Zen depended upon specific details of group practice protocols, an argument could be made that one approach is probably and provably more effective than another. But this would not explain the enlightenment of some of the outstanding Ancestors, such as Huineng, who experienced profound insight with no history of practice or dharma study. Others had no substantial insight until they had left behind the formal practice altogether, beginning with Buddha himself. As Master Dogen himself instructed:

From the first time you meet a master

Without engaging in incense offering; bowing; chanting Buddha’s name;

Repentance or reading scriptures

You should just wholeheartedly sit

And thus drop away body and mind

While Dogen surely engaged in all of these activities, he recognized that they were peripheral, to the personal experience of insight, and meant to be supportive, to the central practice of zazen, the effect of which does not depend on the peripherals. Nor does the essential process of divesting ourselves of the social, cultural and personal baggage we have accumulated during our short lifetimes depend upon our powers of analytical thinking.

You cannot analyze your way to Zen’s insight; you cannot think your way to spiritual awakening. But that does not mean that analysis or thinking is the problem. It is our misunderstanding of the functioning, and consequent misuse, of this powerful tool that is likely to be our downfall. One of my mentors from the world of design science, R. Buckminster Fuller, defined human intelligence as our ability to extract general principles from particular case experiences. After so many repeat experiences of witnessing fast- and slow-moving entities — such as rabbits and turtles, or rafts and rocket ships — the child comes to know the meaning of “fast” as opposed to “slow,” as a universal operative principle not limited to any particular example. “All things are like this,” to coopt one of Master Dogen’s frequent tropes, which captures the general utility of analogizing.

Likewise, the sheer repetition of taking up the posture, breathing, and open awareness of the method of Zen, holds out the possibility that under such intensive observation, the constructed self will implode, revealing  the underlying “true self,” the practitioner having successfully extracted the general principle from the many case experiences of engaging unfiltered awareness again and again and again.

In the next UnMind we will take up another universally operative principle — gravity — compared and contrasted with its more human aspect — gravitas — and their relation to Zen and Design Thinking. Meanwhile please recognize the relative futility of depending upon analysis in your Zen practice, especially in meditation. You might instead consider how zazen compares and contrasts, by analogy, with the other operative dynamics of your life, such as your profession, or health and wellness initiatives.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.

Producer: Shinjin Larry Little