The Cosmos Doesn't Care

This morning at 3 am I opened an email with a mondo question about a movie called either Do or Let Die (which I couldn’t find online, and might have been confused with Live and Let Die) or A Time to Die (a 1991 film with ex-porn star Traci Lords). I assume, though, that the movie in question is actually the latest James Bond movie, No Time to Die.

The question went something like this:

“After watching the movie, it occurred to me yet again that all literature illustrates that all life is conditioned and impermanent and that human suffering is caused by our denial of this truth. 

“We deny it because we love, which is desire, and don’t want to suffer the loss of what we love. Because of this desire, because of love, we perpetuate all suffering. Should we not love? Can we not love? Are we doomed to love? 

“Can that love make us cause the suffering and death of the delusional perpetrators of suffering as a solution?

“Can we stop the cycle of violence and suffering?

“What should a practitioner do when faced with the loss of country, friends, neighbors, and loved ones under these circumstances? 

“What is the correct action?”

I’ll begin by saying I grew up on James Bond movies and books. It would not be too much to say that they had a very formative influence on me and my view of the world, for better or worse. I think No Time to Die may be the best.

The film begins as Death comes stalking over an icy terrain in the form of a killer wearing a mask from the Japanese Noh stage. Warped by his personal suffering, the villain behind the mask is bent on Karmic Revenge. He is the archetypal teenage shooter. Because his bad complexion has scarred him, he wants to mow down all the guys, like Bond, who get the girls. And the girls too. In other words, he is out to destroy the whole world. He is the face of the poison Anger, in spite of the serene mask he wears.

Meanwhile, Bond is chilling in Jamaica, fishing and living the life in retirement, detached from involvement with world affairs. Until he is recruited to return to active duty to stop the villain who threatens to destroy the world. We should know, however, that it is useless to stop Death or Karma. Only for so long can even Bond put off Death — or the End of the World.

Here at the outset Bond embodies the Buddhist dilemma in a nutshell. Do I try to achieve nirvana for myself in this life through nonattachment, purifying my practice, like the arhats and lohans of old, by dwelling in ku? Or do I enter the fray of shiki, of samsara, of the shit, and try to help all beings through engagement in the affairs of this world, trying to transform the suffering of others? The Peace of Buddha, or the Determination of Daruma?

Yes — and yes. 

But we must first learn to think of the challenge in this way: Life is a game that we can’t win; we can only put off losing. As the ending of Oedipus Rex tells us, “Now as we watch and await the final hour, count no one happy till they die, free of suffering at last.” Bond has put off losing to Death through numerous books and films, until now.

We can’t choose not to die. We can’t say, “I have no time for that. This is no time for me to die.” What we can do is to choose to act honorably, or not, as long as we live. We can choose to act as wisely as possible, or not. We can put all our training and expertise to work to “stop the cycle of violence and suffering,” but we have to know in advance that this is ultimately impossible.

The question in the email implies that there is a way out of suffering in this life and that we, as practitioners, should be able to avoid suffering, if not for ourselves then for others. If only we could find “the correct action.” 

One assumption seems to be that we might avoid suffering by not loving (which seems to be confused with desire, but desire is only one form of love, the love of attachment and clinging). And early James Bond movies certainly gave the impression that the way to nonattachment was by becoming a cold-hearted spy in the house of love (to borrow the title of an Anais Nin novel). 

The question about suffering seems to refer to the Four Noble Truths. But what does the Heart Sutra say about the Four Noble Truths? It says that these are Four Noble Illusions. Go back to Mushotoku Mind, Chapter Ten, which I entitled “The Four Noble Truths That Are Not.” There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no path to lead from suffering. In ku there are none of these; there is only mushotoku, the attainment of no attainment.

Suffering, in other words, is caused not by love but by being attached to shiki, to an outcome, an attainment, desire, passion. And as we know, passion means suffering.

Like so many other people, I have been suffering recently because of the actions of a few people in a courtroom, dressed in black robes like priests, who have decided that we no longer have certain rights. When the questioner asks about “losing a country,” that’s what comes to mind for me. Not as a physical refugee, although that is terrible, but by losing the idea of a country, which is after all what a country is, at least that’s what this country is. Not founded on land or borders or blood, and not on some divine right, nor on race, but on a noble idea of freedom and equality: the great experiment. But like Bond, we are only able to enjoy a brief respite from fighting the injustices before reentering the fray because there is always someone in a white mask or a black robe who wants to take revenge on the world.

But to return to the question: “Should we not love? Can we not love? Are we doomed to love?”

The beautiful thing about this Bond movie is that it shows that Bond is human. He is not immortal. “Just a boring family man,” said one disappointed and cynical viewer. Bond is no Superman. He has no pretensions of becoming a buddha. “Too stupid to become Buddha,” wrote Dogen in a poem that Deshimaru quotes, “I only desire to become a true bodhisattva / And help all beings cross to the other shore.” Isn’t that better than becoming Buddha? Perhaps all bodhisattvas are just boring family men and women — because their heroism is pointless — or perhaps better to say “winless” — since we are all engaged in a losing struggle with the inevitability of suffering.

As my Tai Chi instructor always said, “Just begin by relaxing into the recognition that you have already lost.”

Are we doomed to love? Let’s hope so. Love isn’t our doom; it is our salvation. Or rather: it is both our doom and our salvation. That doesn’t mean it makes us immortal, though. Immortals don’t love.

Perhaps it is true that “all literature illustrates that our lives are conditional and impermanent,” but it does not follow that it is “our denial of this fact that causes suffering.” Suffering causes suffering. Life causes suffering. There is no way out of suffering. There are only ways to deal with suffering or, as the sutra says, to “transform” suffering.

Literature makes distinctions between different genres, which are really our different reactions to the reality of our lives. Tragedy weeps over life’s impermanence. Comedy laughs at our impermanence. Tragicomedy tries to show that our lives are a mixture of laughter and tears, and sometimes a spasm of the two combined.

No Time to Die gets the tragicomic cocktail just about right — for an action movie. (The real genre of the action movie, the spy movie, is of course romance, but there are different flavors of romance.) The slippery Bond is finally cornered, and being human, he is proved to be no superman but mortal after all (even boring family Superman had a mortal weakness, love or nostalgia for his home planet in the form of Kryptonite). Bond accepts that mortality and his fate. He acts honorably, which is all we can do. That’s a tragic motif, of course, but the redemption is worth it, as in the tragedy of Christ whose sacrifice is comic in the end because it redeems not only his own suffering but that of the rest of the world forever and ever amen. It’s the supreme Christian myth, isn’t it. A divine comedy disguised as a human tragedy.

The question in the email seems to want to avoid the inevitability of failure, of suffering, of death. As though “as practitioners” we can suss out some “correct action” that will cheat suffering, cheat death. As practitioners, which means “as humans,” we can only do what we can do. Little as it is. 

We sometimes think our practice is about improving ourselves, improving our actions, improving the world — even though I have tried over and over again to discourage this way of thinking about our practice. Our practice, as passed down to us through Kodo Sawaki and Taisen Deshimaru and Robert Livingston, is to align ourselves with the cosmos, and the cosmos is pretty clear that it doesn’t care. That is not to say that we should not care about our actions, but we should not trick ourselves into believing that there is a right and wrong answer, a right and a wrong action on a cosmic level. On the contrary. This is why we must take responsibility for our human actions so that we can create the meaning that is not inherent in the universe by discovering how to act with compassion within its carelessness. 

If that means dying for love, like Bond, so be it. We should all be so lucky.

But let me end by letting Deshimaru have the last word. Here’s what he says in Chapter Ten of Mushotoku Mind about how to deal with suffering:

“In the end it is enough to forget yourself, to forget your ego, and all the sufferings in the world disappear of their own accord. You must begin by sitting peacefully, legs crossed and head straight, and let the whole painful story of humanity flow into your consciousness, without intervening, without being frightened and trying to flee. Just as the Buddha did.”

After zazen, you can go back to saving the world.

— Richard Collins

Daniel Craig as James Bond in No Time to Die (2021).

Grasshopper Transcendence

What words, what notes can net what one feels in those too-brief blissful moments? Grasshopper transcendence, [William Carlos] Williams called it, as he caught their translucent wings whirring up into the light before the roar of those milling crowds forced their entry like some thief.

– Paul Mariani, “Snow Moon over Singer Island”

I once ran into David Carradine in a gas station in Southern California. This was in the early 1970s, long before his role in Kill Bill, when he was still best known for his role in the television series, Kung Fu, in which he was called Caine, or Grasshopper.

But this doesn’t have anything to do with that Grasshopper. Nor with the cocktail supposedly invented by Philip Guichet, owner of Tujague’s, in 1918. If that’s what you’re looking for, you can stop reading now.

Many people when they come to Zen practice or any sort of so-called “spiritual” practice are looking for transcendence. As in Transcendental Meditation, or even the Transcendentalism of the early American Romantics, who first imported the “wisdom of the East,” in which the small self approaches some sort of communion with the Great Self or Atman. But we don’t offer that either.

I have told this story before, but back in 2002 or so, when I was answering correspondence for Robert, someone asked, “Have you ever experienced an alternate state during zazen?” Robert answered, “Our everyday state is our alternate state; in zazen we experience our natural state.”

And yet there is a kind of quickening that we experience in zazen sometimes. Sometimes it’s called satori, awakening. Or as Kodo Sawaki called satori: “a thief entering an empty house.”

I always liked the anecdote about the young monk going up the mountain to a retreat when he met another monk coming down the mountain from the same retreat. He asked the monk coming down if he had experienced satori and if so what was it like? The one coming down simply dropped his bag. “What will you do now with your experience?” asked the young monk. The other picked up his bag and continued down the mountain.

This is Zen transcendence. 

In the last few days I came across a phrase in Paul Mariani’s biography of Wallace Stevens in which he compares the big transcendence that Stevens longed for in his poetry with the “slight transcendence” that William Carlos Williams achieved in his poetry. (Stevens meanwhile traded the bravado of his aesthetic dandyism for a secret deathbed conversion to Catholicism.) Mariani calls Williams’s version a “grasshopper transcendence.” Up into the air to catch the light, then back down to earth again. One monk goes up the mountain; another comes down. But they are the same monk.

This is a nice phrase, grasshopper transcendence, and I’m going to steal it because it reminds me of Caine, fresh from his training at Shaolin Mountain, where Bodhidharma himself sat with the mystery, before coming to the American West. Little Grasshopper, that quickening leap that we sometimes feel with satori. 

But we always come back down to earth. This is what we experience over and over again in zazen. We can call it a leap of faith, or an epiphany, or simply a glimpse into our natural state when we feel alive, alive to our life, to nature, to our environment, to our situation, to our own imagination even. But alive.

And now I’m going to think about going to Tujague’s in the French Quarter for a cold, refreshing Grasshopper.

Kyosaku! 

— Richard Collins

The Grasshopper. Invented by Philip Guichet at Tujague's, New Orleans, 1918.

Fathers and Fathers

It’s Father’s Day. Maybe a good time to consider the lineage and some of the implications of patriarchy, fatherhood, responsibility.

There is the koan that asks: what is your original face before your parents were born? Some people will take this as an invitation to think about an essential spirit or soul, like Wordsworth in his poem about “intimations of immortality'', where he says that the child before birth comes “not in entire forgetfulness” but somewhat ready-made and “trailing clouds of glory” before he or she is incarnated.

But this is not what we mean at all. This would assume that we have already been formed, that we bring our spiritual as well as our biological baggage with us (and not just in the form of karma or DNA), that there is some self that is transcendent and essential, unchanging and substantial, that has always been and always will be. 

But everything changes. What manifests in this life is temporary, form out of emptiness, emptiness into form. And because it is temporary it is more sacred than the eternal.

I’m thinking more of the real aspects of this idea of fatherhood. All of us have our own father experiences, unique. Some of us will bristle at the idea of fathers, having had not such a good experience. Some of us will lack that experience altogether, or have a very indifferent experience of physically or emotionally absent fathers. Some of us have not been very good fathers, it’s true. But our unique experience is, in a sense, our inheritance, our lineage, if you like. This is what we have to deal with, just as the kechimyaku serves as the family tree for those of us who have been ordained and taken the precepts. That’s the lineage of our own karma. It has nothing to do with transcendent souls, which is just a pretty platonic idea, much less with rewards and retributions, which is just a sophomoric notion of karma. And it has nothing to do with biological fatherhood, which is just an accident.

The choices we make with (or as) emotional fathers, spiritual fathers, that’s what counts. I am reminded of the story about Hakuin, the great Rinzai master. He was accused by a young girl of fathering her child. Sounds like one of those scandals we hear of in churches all the time. He didn’t deny it. He accepted the responsibility, even though he lost his reputation. He raised the child as though it were his own. A year or so later the mother admitted that she had lied and the biological father was a fishmonger. And while Hakuin loved the child as his own, he let it go without attachment. This is what true fatherhood is. Whether it is a spiritual father or a biological father or an emotional father or an adoptive father. Accepting responsibility. Without self-aggrandizement. Without attachment.

My own father was very different from me. Not that we didn’t get along. We just didn’t have anything in common, except the accident of genes. I had several surrogate fathers instead, all three of them (perhaps not surprisingly) teachers. Father figures, we call them, in a very strange turn of phrase. 

The first was my history teacher in high school, Walter Bodlander (1920-2019). One day when I fell asleep in his class (I was that kind of student) he sent me outside and told me to hop around the building on one foot. I said the hell with this and went home. But we remained friends for the rest of his life until he died a few years ago, at 99. He very generously hosted the reception for my first marriage in his house in the Hollywood Hills. Over the years we met up in Oregon, London, Los Angeles, always as though no time at all had passed. During all those years I never realized what a remarkable man he was. Born the same year as my father, Walter was a German Jew who joined Army intelligence during the war, something I did not know until, at the age of 95, he received the French Legion of Honor for his role in the invasion of Normandy and the liberation of Paris. But isn’t this how we treat our fathers, not recognizing their worth until it is too late?

My dissertation advisor in graduate school, Professor Robert Peters (1924-2014), served a similar role. Bob was an accomplished scholar and critic who became a powerful poet and performance artist. He could be a ruthless critic, but he was always generous with me, more generous than I deserved. It was the death of Bob’s son that prompted his first book, Songs for a Son, and shocked him into embracing his own true identity as a gay man, giving him insight into his true self, giving him his authentic voice. It was perhaps not coincidental that the dead son happened to have been named Richard and would have been about my age if he had not died as a child.

The third and final father figure, of course, was Robert Livingston Roshi (1933-2021). As with my own father, Robert and I did not communicate that much, you might be surprised to hear. Over the course of twenty years, we had surprisingly few profound conversations. We were not friends. Our connection was not emotional or intellectual, as it was with Walter Bodlander and Bob Peters, much less biological as it was with my father. There is no one word to express the foundation of our relationship, except perhaps the mind-to-mind transmission of shiho. There was a total acceptance of each other, from the very beginning, unconditional acceptance. (This is not to say that there weren’t moments of falling asleep in class and punishments imposed and ignored, even authority rejected; but just as with Walter Bodlander, even though I never hopped around the building at Robert’s whim, I always returned to the dojo.) I hesitate to call it love, which is a very pale term for a vivid mystery that fits into no category. But I suppose that is what in a sense it was. Love. Like that love-without-attachment of Hakuin and his son.

What, then, was my original face before these father figures were born?

Of course I have to say “I don’t know.” None of us knows who we were before we were, before our fathers (and mothers) made us who we have become. Just as we don’t know what our eventual face will be when our great-grandchildren have forgotten us, and we have passed back into ku, emptiness, the heavens, sky.

— Richard Collins

仙厓義梵 Sengai Gibon (1750-1837)

After the Death of Illusion

No death is so sad or final as the death of an illusion.

— Arthur Koestler

This is Arthur Koestler writing in the 1930s. A devoted Communist, Koestler was lamenting his disillusionment caused by the Nazi-Soviet Pact early in the Second World War. Like many intellectuals during the ‘30s, Koestler saw Communism as the path to a better future for mankind, and so the actions of Stalin were a great disappointment, a great betrayal of the ideals they had committed themselves to. 

The context is important. But I think there is a more general truth to be had about the death of illusion if we see this in terms of dharma gates. The death of an illusion is the penetration of a dharma gate. Remember: one of the four great vows of the bodhisattva is: “Dharma gates are endless; I vow to penetrate them all.” 

A dharma gate is, essentially, a disillusionment. The death of an illusion. Each dharma gate that we penetrate opens onto a new reality, one that shatters the previous reality. Or, if you like, a new illusion that shatters the previous illusion. However useful that reality was for a time, we enter the new reality with newly opened eyes.

Think of your own disillusionments in life, those personal moments when you realized that your concept of reality was altered in some concrete situation, a betrayal, an infidelity, the fall of a hero or heroine, the disappointment in some ideal, the reversal of some principle or condition that you held inviolate, unquestioned, unchangeable, real. 

This is bound to happen whenever we place our faith and trust in anything and expect it to endure. Because nothing endures. Not even profound statements like “No death is so sad or final as the death of an illusion.” 

Such truths are themselves illusions. The more declarative, the more assertive, the more certain they are, the more likely they are to fall apart upon examination. It is part of our Zen practice to examine the truth of such statements, to acknowledge the opening of dharma gates. But it is also our practice to examine the limits to those truths, and not to allow ourselves to settle into dogma. As the Heart Sutra says, “There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no way to end suffering, no path to lead from suffering.” In short, no Four Noble Truths, only Four Noble Illusions. 

On first hearing it, we might find Koestler’s pronouncement to be solid, profound, unimpeachable. Just as early Buddhists found the pronouncements of the five skanda as being the foundations of our reality and just as they found the Four Noble Truths to be sources of comfort and edification. But upon further consideration, we should realize in what ways such pronouncements, for all their wisdom, are wrong. Or, as Avalokiteshvara tells Shariputra, they are empty. 

Yes, perhaps for an idealist like the committed Communist Koestler, the death of an ideological certitude (the illusion that communism would save the world) seems to be “sad and final.” And for Koestler, no doubt, it was. 

The question is: Is the death of an illusion really the saddest and most final? When you stopped believing in Santa Claus, was it such a horrible moment? Or did a new clarity arise?

I would say that the death of a pet is more “sad and final” than the death of Koestler’s belief in the communist panacea. And what about the death of loved ones, or acquaintances, or even “nobodies”, like the millions who died at the hands of Stalin; do they not count as more “sad and final” than the death of Koestler’s worship of a political system? Seen in this way, his disillusionment is laughable, his sadness a wallowing in self-pity. 

In a way, the truth of Koestler’s statement remains, though. When a loved one dies, what is more “sad and final” than their physical death is the death of our illusion that they would last forever, that we had all the time in the world to be with them, to look forward to. 

Perhaps we should call Dharma Gates, Illusion Gates. Illusion after illusion. For isn’t this the same thing as saying, truth after truth?

In Zen practice, we vow that Dharma gates are endless. When we come upon some sagacious saying, like Koestler’s, we might find it to be pithy and profound. We should acknowledge what it can teach us, but we should also examine the limits of its truth. We must also examine its untruth, its illusion. Thus we must, as the Heart Sutra says, go beyond, beyond, altogether beyond, to the other shore. To the death of illusion.

Richard Collins

15 May 2022

Leandro Erlich, Window with Ladder — Too Late for Help.(2008)

Besthoff Sculpture Garden, New Orleans Museum of Art

No-Self Portraiture

In zazen we are all nude models for ourselves.

Concentrate! Stretch the backbone. Head presses the sky. When we say “concentrate,” this has nothing to do with thinking. It is not like studying for an exam. It is more like making a fist, except that it is effortless. It is more like a yawn or a sneeze or laughter: whole-hearted, spontaneous, yet silent and invisible. Mind is concentrated in the body like tea in hot water, infused.

Last night I was reading Notes of a Nude Model. The author talks about the amateurs, those models who don’t last, the ones who are self-conscious, who have an inflated sense of themselves, modesty or shame or pride. Or the lazy ones who think sitting for an artist is just sitting and relaxing on the dais and collecting a check. No, real models work up a sweat by just sitting, just like bodhisattvas in the dojo. 

During zazen, like modeling, although we just sit, we never relax into our posture. In shikantaza we constantly stretch the backbone, head pressing the sky. Like an artist’s model, we hold the pose like a pro. We don’t fidget; we are not here to make ourselves comfortable, to self-soothe, to suck our thumbs. 

We are here to concentrate. To strip ourselves naked and to observe the beauties and blemishes, unmoving and unmoved, without pride or prejudice. Zazen is neither analysis nor appreciation. It is observation but without a mirror and without an artist to reflect or interpret us. We are a mirror of ourselves, our own artists, our own interpreters, like empty plaster casts on a balcony aware of the world around us.

Reading Notes of a Nude Model I was reminded of when I lived in London and sat for an artist friend of mine in his freezing studio in Hackney back in 1980-81. The cold never affected me until I tried to move. After a couple of hours of “just sitting,” I recall how on the bus ride home to Victoria I would feel emptied out but exhilarated too. I would catch a glimpse of myself in the reflections of the windows with the London cityscape in the background and hardly recognize that person, my so-called self: who was that “self” anyway? 

Twenty years later, when I began to come to the dojo and strip myself naked morning after morning, I would recognize that feeling of being emptied out after zazen. It was as though I was sitting for my portrait, except that it was a no-self portrait. In zazen we are all nude models for ourselves. We sit like pros, emptied out and sweating. 

— Richard Collins

ZEN PROGRESS

Everyone seems to be interested in their “progress” in Zen practice. Whether we have been practicing for two weeks or twenty years, we sometimes wonder whether we’ve made any progress. This occurs to us even when we know that there is no such thing as progress in Zen practice. The only progress is realizing that progress is illusory.

Unlike in the martial arts, we don’t have a system of grades and rewards in Zen. We don’t have different colored belts to indicate where one is in their practice, to mark their achievements. No competitions to build up or confirm our confidence, or to tear it down. Of course some people insist on seeing ordination as a mark of distinction, like graduation from high school or college — it’s more like graduation from kindergarten. 

It’s a familiar pattern: strong practice until ordination, then a slacking off, while they savor the view from the height of their little dunghill. This is a mistake. Bodhisattva ordination, monastic ordination, the shuso ceremony, even shiho, these are all aspirational; they are not graduations into some higher rank, some exalted realm of the enlightened. One only takes on at each stage the added responsibilities of continued practice with a greater realization of one’s incapacity. 

There is only one belt in which to wrap yourself in Zen, and that is the black belt of your own Death. Congratulations! Until then, though, we are all works “in progress.”

In Buddhism, however, death is symbolized by white (the color of all colors) instead of black (the color of no color). The white belt in martial arts dojos is the color of the beginner.

So we go back to the cushion each time as a beginner, always to confront the same question: what to do now in this moment, how to live life here and now. The progress of yesterday is past, the achievements of yesterday have expired. Yes, we have made some improvements, we have perhaps dropped some delusions. But just as with the dharma gates that we penetrate (there is always another and then another to open), delusions are endless: we vow to drop them all. 

Perhaps we have dropped the illusion of ambition — either because we have achieved our goal or failed to achieve it — but we have not dropped the delusion of hope. We have dropped the illusion of insecurity, only to replace it with the delusion of security. We exchange regrets for new fears, desires for new disillusionments, and so on. 

Is this progress? Maybe. But we still go back to the same unanswerable question: how to meet this moment here and now.

Do we make progress? Robert used to speak of the “wisdom” that arises from Zen practice, a spontaneous, natural, automatic, and unconscious alignment with the cosmos, the order of things, the Dao, the Way. What sort of wisdom do we achieve? Can we call it progress? 

From time to time in our practice we realize that something in our lives has changed, changed for the better — i.e., it has “progressed” — but this realization usually happens only after the fact. Satori can be —and usually is — very subtle, more like an evolution than a revelation. We look back on a difficult time like an expanse of water that we have somehow walked across and wonder: how did I get through that?

But we must not expect to be rewarded even for our unconscious miracles.

When the Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma about what merit he had achieved, Bodhidharma answered: “No merit. Vast emptiness.” When we can look upon our progress and say, sincerely, “no merit, vast emptiness,” then maybe we have made some Zen progress.

— Richard Collins

Gary Larson

the oak tree in the garden and the four great vows

You might hear from time to time the koan, “Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?” The answer given is something like, “The oak tree in the garden.” 

When Buddhism came to China, it became more grounded in the phenomenal world, less airy. Not so many floating devas as Buddhism had in India, as a sort of hangover from the polytheism or henotheism of Hinduism. As Buddhism collided with Taoism, it became more realistic, more connected to nature, firmly planted in the here and now. It became Chan, and eventually Zen.

They are still up there, of course, the floating spirits. Take a look at the wonderful folk novel, The Journey to the West, or any martial arts movie, like the one I saw this week, The Sorcerer and the White Snake. These are full of magical transformations, transformations that these fantasies promise come from practice, defying gravity, logic, and the laws of biology and physics. It is not so easy to wean people of their addiction to the supernatural. We are children in that way.

Zen brings us back down to earth. 

Bodhidharma is the face we give to this crux in the evolution of Zen. Bodhidharma as he was known in India, or Tamo as he became known in China, or Daruma in Japan. We say he came from India, sat for nine years in a cave at Shaolin, cut off his eyelids from which sprang tea leaves, and invented kung fu. This recognizable human figure is someone we can identify with. But of course changing centuries of belief took much longer than what could be done by just one person, it is a much more complicated process, just as changing the narrow path of Theravada or Hinayana Buddhism into Mahayana Buddhism, the narrow path into the broad path, was a much more complicated process than the effect of just one lifetime.

Yet in our Zen practice, this is exactly what is expected of us, changing our narrow path for the broad path, the little mountain getaway for the peakless mountain of Zen practice, the private stream for the shoreless river. 

Fulfilling the Four Great Vows of the Bodhisattva path cannot be the work of a day, or a lifetime. Yet we can fulfill these vows every day if we don’t think of them in an abstract way but in a concrete, down-to-earth way

These vows may seem quite theoretical. But just as Bodhidharma planted Zen in China at Shaolin, we need to plant the bodhisattva vows in our own reality here in New Orleans, or wherever we happen to be.

The first great vow is – Shujo muhen seigan do – Beings however many they are, and they are innumerable, I vow to save them all. 

Not only is that impossible, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. So it is much better to plant that as an oak tree in your own garden by finding a concrete equivalent in your life that makes sense. I am not talking about trees, of course. 

What does it mean to save all beings? How can you do that? Simply by taking care of the things around you, whatever is in your power. Not just those things that are your responsibility legally or officially, but everything that you come in contact with, everything that your being affects. The zafu you’re sitting on, the clothing you wear, how you drive in the street, your pets, your family, your job, This is what it means to save all beings, Not to go around preaching the gospel of Buddhism or any other religion.

The second great vow is about bonno. Bonno mujin seigan dan – Illusions, however many they are, and they are endless, I vow to drop them all. 

Bonno can be interpreted in many ways. Illusions, delusions, desires, problems, issues. But you must identify your own bonno, your own issues, your own oak tree in that sense. Your anxieties, your obsessions, your betes noires. What are the issues that you are going to drop? Don’t worry about everybody else’s. 

Of course taking care of all of the beings that are near you might help to ease your anxiety or your obsessions, whatever your bonno happen to be. 

The third great vow says that dharma gates – homon muryo seigan gaku – however many they are, and they are endless, I vow to penetrate them all. 

Dharma means many things. It means the order of things, the law, reality, the teachings, your own path or profession. Dharma is what unfolds; dharma is what falls into place. And the gates are a nice metaphor for the opening up of reality, or opportunity, or realizations, or clarities, epiphanies, satori. 

Opening dharma gates – eliminating ignorance – can be very helpful in getting rid of your bonno born of the three poisons – anger, greed, and ignorance – very useful too in saving all beings.

But make it your own satori, not someone else’s. When a boy held up his finger to imitate Gutei’s silent answer to just about any question that he was asked, Gutei cut it off because the boy’s answer wasn’t his own oak tree.

The fourth vow has to do with the Buddha Way – butsudo mujo seigan jo – however long it is, I vow to follow through, and it is endless. 

Here again, you have to discover what the Buddha way is, not from scripture, not from the sutras, not from what I’m talking about, but from your own experience, your own life story. Zazen: this is one Buddha Way, one proven path. But you can’t observe zazen, you can’t hold up your finger in imitation of a teacher. You have to do it yourself. You are the oak tree in the garden, firmly rooted in the posture of zazen.

But finding your Buddha Way is essential to entering dharma gates, helpful in dropping your bonno, and useful in helping all beings. This is why we put so much emphasis on zazen. It is the beginning of the path, but it is also the end. It is the One Great Vow that includes all the others, naturally, automatically, unconsciously.

— Richard Collins

Yakumo Nihon Teien Japanese Garden, New Orleans City Park

ZEN IS NOT A BOOK CLUB

Yesterday I got entangled in one of those online Zen discussion groups. I know better, but I have an incurable urge to be helpful. 

Someone asked a virtual dojo etiquette question that went something like this. “Is it rude to skip zazen and ceremony and only tune in for the dharma talk?”

Everyone seemed to be falling over themselves to be inclusive and welcoming and tolerant and nice and, I suppose, “Buddhist,” by saying that it wasn’t rude at all, that “in these times” it was certainly okay, that they were just happy she was “getting the dharma,” and so on.

I suggested that maybe we were not the ones she should be asking, since not all online groups had the same etiquette. I wrote, “You should ask them.” 

It seemed to me that she already suspected that it was rude, or else the question would not have occurred to her. Instead, she seemed to be congratulating herself by announcing that she was being sensitive to their feelings even if she was not respecting them, while at the same time asking the world at large for our permission for her to be rude even though it was really none of our business.

The moderator asked what “my” answer would be. My answer was needlessly nuanced. I thought it would depend on whether this was a one-time deal or if it happened all the time. Was there a reason for her skipping zazen and ceremony, or was it just her preference? Was she in another time zone? Was there some Daylight Saving Time confusion? If not, then I would wonder whether she was only interested in the discussion of ideas instead of in the practice. If we followed the analogy of in-person zazen, was it rude to come in only for the discussion afterward? It would, at the very least, seem odd. What if someone, for example, came only for ceremony?

The online dojo, of course, has “in these times” caused us to relax some of our etiquette, but that is no reason to abandon it. Dojo etiquette is usually based on two principles. First, it keeps us from disturbing the others we practice with. When you enter a virtual dojo late, there are no creaking steps or slamming doors. But dojo etiquette is also for the development of our own self-discipline. Being late to the virtual dojo does not speak well of someone’s discipline.

Then there is the question of picking and choosing the elements of our practice. As it says in the Shinjinmei, the Way is not easy, not difficult, if you just don't choose. While tuning in late virtually does not have the same disruptive effect, it would seem to have the same intention of picking and choosing your own preferences. But Zen practice is not about you.

The whole issue reminded me of book clubs. Skipping zazen and ceremony and arriving in time for the dharma talk seems a bit like not reading your book club’s selection but coming for the wine and cheese anyway. You want to enjoy the discussion and fellowship and refreshments, but are those really worth the effort of actually reading the book? I know it’s often done, but Zen is not a book club.

Zen practice consists of the three treasures: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Or, to put those in concrete terms: Zazen, Teachings, and Fellowship. To skip zazen and ceremony and choose only the talk is to throw out the Buddha and keep the Dharma and Sangha.

I wondered why no one in our sangha ever tunes in just for the dharma talk. Is it because we are too strict, not welcoming enough? Or maybe it is because we don’t really have dharma talks like other sanghas. Our dharma talks consist of kusen (spontaneous oral teaching during zazen) and mondo (question and answer discussion after the closing ceremony). In our lineage, the dharma talk as such (teisho, a sort of lecture or sermon outside of zazen) does not really exist or is at least rare.

So if this person had missed zazen, she would have missed the dharma talk.

I was struck anew by the unique nature and value of kusen, which is somewhat peculiar to the Deshimaru lineage. I realized that maybe the kusen’s power is that it integrates all three treasures at once: Buddha, because kusen is delivered during zazen; Dharma, because it is teaching during zazen; and Sangha, because we are all hearing it together in the present moment whether virtually or in person during zazen.

The teisho gives the impression that it can exist without zazen, that it is somehow different from zazen, and thus inviting comparison with zazen, with the result that some people think it is more valuable. If the choice is between zazen and teaching, they might say, “I didn’t come here to sit and waste time staring at the wall.” 

Just don’t choose. 

We used to have a fellow in our sangha who was gung-ho about Zen, completely focused on satori and enlightenment. One day during sesshin he came up to me and complained about samu, work practice. “I’m not here to scrub toilets,” he said, “it interrupts my practice.” I asked if he thought samu was different from zazen. He just looked at me like I was crazy, packed up his bag, and was gone. Now he’s a physical trainer at a gym. I don’t know if he found satori, but he seems to have found his work practice, and that’s good. Zen is not for everyone. It is not a gym, and it’s not a book club. 

— Richard Collins

Is zazen different than cleaning the toilet?