A podcast of original teachings and music by Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston Roshi, guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order.
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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.
162: Election Year Zen part 7
Episode 162
Monday, September 2, 2024 • Duration 15:55
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?
153: Design of Future Zen part 1
Episode 153
Wednesday, May 8, 2024 • Duration 15:30
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.
152: Election Year Zen part 4
Episode 152
Wednesday, May 1, 2024 • Duration 18:56
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.
151: Three Jewel Design part 3
Episode 151
Wednesday, April 24, 2024 • Duration 20:03
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.
150: Three Jewel Design part 2
Episode 150
Wednesday, April 17, 2024 • Duration 19:30
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.
149: Three Jewels Design part 1
Episode 149
Wednesday, April 10, 2024 • Duration 19:11
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.
148: Election Year Zen #3
Episode 148
Wednesday, April 3, 2024 • Duration 15:13
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:
147: Zen and Zero
Episode 147
Wednesday, March 27, 2024 • Duration 21:35
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.
146: Zen and Design Thinking
Episode 146
Wednesday, March 20, 2024 • Duration 21:40
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.
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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.
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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.”
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.
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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.”
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.
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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.”
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.
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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.”
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.
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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.”
• 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.
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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.”
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.
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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.”
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.
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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.”
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.
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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.”
