One of the reasons I believe in jazz is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same any place in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born — or before you’re born — and it’s the last thing you hear. — Dave Brubeck



Thursday, October 29, 2020

"The Three Key B’s of Buddhism: Bowing, Boring and Bliss," by Phil Whalen & Ken Ireland

Phil with Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman at Naropa

Bowing, Boring and Bliss


I recall a talk about “Bowing” by Zenshin Phil Whalen at the Hartford Street Zen Center. Damn I loved his talks. He was without a doubt one of the most literate men ever to don the robes of a Zen priest anywhere, at any time. And if you want to challenge me, I’ll be suiting up on the Dalai Lama’s debate ground up here in McLeod Ganj. 


But first things firstI was going to try to record the talk, but was my usual bumbling-self with electronic equipment, and couldn’t get the machine working in good time. Being his usual patient-self, he yelled at me, saying that we didn’t have all day and, anyway some things were just not meant to be recorded. Sometimes words are purposefully impermanent. It was not like he was going to recite some goddamn hidden, secret sutra for the last time before he croaked.


So I lost the talk, but I am going to do my best to reconstruct it from the basic “B’s” as I remember them.


He began by saying that if he really wanted to write a bestseller, his publisher would insist that he come up with a title like the “The 10 Recondite Rules for Clean Buddhist Living” or something like that. So let’s give it a try: “The Three Key B’s of Buddhism, Bowing Boredom and Bliss.”  Perhaps Phil’s publisher was onto something. More than 20 years have passed, and I still remember long sections of his talk (it’s also true that as with many teachers, he returned again and again to his favorite topics like an old horse headed back to the barn).


When he was in Japan, in the monasteries and temples there, everyone bowed three times. People just always bowed three times. But for those who couldn’t count, he said, before he just sat down to begin his talk, he bowed nine times. We all bow nine times at Zen Center, why is that? Well he said, when the first students began to gather around Suzuki Roshi in San Francisco, they went to him one day and complained, “Roshi we love you but we’re Americans and we don’t like all this bowing. We don’t understand it. So why are we doing it?” And the Roshi said with a smile, “Oh so you don't like bowing three times? Good. Perfect. I think we should bow nine times. Better that way, More practice.”


So we bow nine times. Better that way. Practice.


Phil then told an anecdotal story about some legendary old Japanese teacher way out in the middle-of-nowhere backcountry who was revered for the callous on his forehead. He explained himself: one of his first teachers had scolded him for being stubborn and told him bowing would be a good practice. So he began bowing. He never stopped. He discovered that the body is stubborn and the mind is stubborn. He said that he would stop when he stopped being stubborn. So he just kept bowing and thus the calloused forehead. In one way or another, we’re all like that.


Then he said that Zen students actually have it very easy. In Tibet all the new monks bow 100,000 times before they do anything. It’s called Ngondro, and it involves the whole body, not just your forehead, hands, arms, knees and feet touching the floor but your whole body flat out, like you were a swimming fish, and it’s so strenuous that it takes a lot of effort to reel back and bounce back up. Do that a hundred thousand times. I’m told that it’s a purifying exercise. But it’s not done with some idea of repentance like Christian pilgrims bowing every three feet along the Camino de Santiago. It’s done because we practice meditation with every bit of ourselves, wholeheartedly, fully, without reservation, holding nothing back. 


And then he said that anyone who’s lived in Asia knows that bowing is just good manners. It’s a sign of respect. You tilt your body down, your eyes are not focused on the face of the person you’re greeting, your whole body is lower. Of course you’re going to bow lower to a king or abbot. There’s a whole book of bowing etiquette: you bow very slightly to someone who’s your equal, but your bow is lower when you greet your parent or someone who’s older out of respect. That’s why we bow to our teachers in a formal situation. We’re showing respect and love. And we show it by using our whole body and mind. Our mind bows down, and for maybe an instant, we’re slightly less arrogant. We have to throw every bit of being into the bow.


But the most important thing, and here is a place where I actually have Phil’s own words, from his notebooks from Tassajara, we have to make it our own. In the rule infested monastery or practice center, we ask ourselves are we “bowing to rules rather than using them? We must contrive to be Buddhas & patriarchs rather than students who are good at following schedules (and bowing).”


But you’ll notice, he said, we follow a certain order in the zendowe bow to the cushion, then everyone else in the room, and we sit. How strange, bowing to the cushion. We’re not bowing to a Buddha, or a person. You can think of it anyway you want to. Sometimes I like to  think that I am bowing to the practice, but that is really way too abstract. Sometimes I do it just automatically, without thinking much of anything. But in any case, we just do it. It’s probably not important what you think about.


Now we get to the B for boring.


We sit and almost immediately after we learn to sit with only slight discomfort and our bodies become both more relaxed and more alert, we get bored. We all have our own experiences, but I’ll tell the world, I get bored.


But then the mind, it’s like fiddling with a bungled up ball of twine, if you try to untangle it when you’re frustrated or angry, the knots are just going to get tighter. You’ll be looking for a knife (He laughed). I’ve pictured the mind as a bag of worms or a net of living anchovies. But you get the point, it’s a conundrum, it’s a mess. It may be filled with ghosts or paranoia or algebraic equations. It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, it’s just there, all tangled up. 


So there’s this big mess of thread sitting in your mind, and you just begin to play with it, without much purpose, no rhyme or reason. You tug a bit here and notice a bit that’s a bit looser over there, but you’re relaxed and maybe you follow the thread to a knot that looks tight but on closer inspection, it loosens up and falls away. And maybe after a while there’s just a whole mess of lovely threads in front of you, and though you really don’t fully grasp how it happened, there it is.


Then the bell rings. 


I’ll end by quoting Mr. Robert Bly who tells us to follow our bliss. Of course Mr. James Campbell has also told us to follow our bliss, and he did it on the Public Television Station so it must be something worth doing. But I was watching Bly talk about it on the TV and found him quite interesting, if not persuasivebecause bliss is not something I can buy, like the gummy bears I get at the Walgreens. It’s just there. 


Some very fussy Buddhists might describe it as a fruit of meditation. If you hang out long enough, it’s just there because it’s always been there, but you wake up, or you open your eyes, or you open your heart. I’ll agree that it’s just there, and it really doesn’t matter how it got there. But this it does share with the gummy bears: when you taste it, you know that it’s a gummy bear.


And sometimes it might feel like something is lost in the process. Bly quoted a poem by Antonio Machado which I quite like.

The wind one brilliant day called to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

The wind said, “In return for the odor of my jasmine, I’d like all the odor of your roses. ”

[Machado said,] “I have no roses; all the flowers in my garden are dead … ”

The wind said, “Then, I’ll take the withered petals, and the yellow leaves, ”

and the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself, “What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?”

I think that’s enough for today. Keep bowing. Thank you.



Thursday, September 10, 2020

The Many Voices, a Note from Jon Joseph Roshi


by Jon Joseph Roshi

Jon has allowed me to repost his commentary on the koan "Little Jade." 

I will attest that the monsoon has finally let up. Thank you, Jon.

Nora Reza


A treasury official retired and came home to Sichuan where he sought out Wuzu to learn about Zen. Wuzu said, "When you were young, did you read a poem which went something like:

 

“She calls to her maid,

‘Little Jade!’

not because she wants something

but just so her lover will hear her voice."

 

The official said, "Yes, I read it."

Wuzu said, "That is very near to Zen."

   ~ PZI Miscellaneous Koans; Entangling Vines, Case 98, Notes

 

This is too rich a story-koan to leave its many parts unvisited, so I would like to sit with it again this week. The above exchange is deeply touching for me: a mistress of the house is calling to her lover through her maid, Little Jade. It is very near to Zen, says the teacher Wuzu. I have a warm memory of this koan, when a few years ago, at St Dorothy’s Rest, a moldering century-old building deep in a redwood forest, we were holding a week-long retreat. I walked into the kitchen to help with cooking, and found my retreat roommate, a former Jesuit novitiate, rooting and clanging through the industrial pots. He was calling out, “Little Jade! Little Jade! Where are you, Little Jade?” At that retreat, unbidden, he gave me a pair of new white socks, which I still have, though they now have holes in the toes.

 

It was all the more unsettling and heart rending, then, to read my Little-Jade friend’s recent blog posts on revisiting his first major love encounter as a gay man. What he thought was a friendship of growing mutual love and respect, turned out to be forced sex and rape, a pattern of emotional abuse that lasted for a quarter century. “I can find no silver lining in the story of my abusive relationship with B, but even if there were one, the relationship was so muddy that I don’t know where to begin to look,” begins his blog.

 

So how to resolve, for him, the many decades-long pain that recently revisited him? “It is my ghost,” he wrote me from Dharamshala, in India, where he now lives. An acquaintance of his and follower of the same psychic-spiritual school from those days, wrote that she herself was able to put her shadow behind her by “obliterating the traces of her parents’ negative influence" in a daily ritual of stamping out her family’s memories. She suggested my Little-Jade friend try the same. “Only time can judge its effectiveness,” my friend writes sardonically.

 

Last night I checked in with him via WhatsApp. McLeod Ganj, like all of India, is under stay-at-home orders; the dark downpour of the monsoon has not let up for weeks. “How are you doing?” I asked my Little-Jade friend, who is alone in his small apartment all day long. We talked about the dark nature of his posts, and laughed about Little Jade in the kitchen years ago. Despite the need, he felt, to write of his experience, he does know that “the Little Jade poem has been written more than once,” and that “it comes in more than one voice.” The variations of the Little Jade poem have allowed him to fall into some deeply satisfying love relationships in his life, he says. “I now write my own Little-Jade poem.”  I sent him Tony Hoagland’s piece, A Color of the Sky, one of my favorites (fragment below):

 

Last night I dreamed of X again.

like a stain on my subconscious sheets.

Years ago she penetrated me

but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,

I never got her out,

but now I’m glad.

 

I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.

I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.

What I thought was an injustice

turned out to be a color of the sky.

 

Perhaps the rain will let up soon. That would be very near to Zen.


___________________________


P. S. Here are two links to the the writing Jon refers to: 

This Victim Refuses Silence

A Very Personal Question: Can I Forgive Bob Hoffman?


Monday, July 20, 2020

Ignatius’s "Discernment of Spirits" as Emotional Intelligence

McLeod Ganj, July 20, 2020


In a cave in northern Spain between 1522 and 1524, Ignatius of Loyola had a series of spiritual experiences that changed his life as well as created a spiritual revolution. As a direct result of his mystical awakening, he, along with 7 of his “companions,” went on to found the Society of Jesus. One of these men, Francis Xavier, came to India in 1542. His body is still venerated to this day in the basilica in Goa that bears his name.


If one thing stands out about the early exploits of the Jesuits, it is their decisive action which they attributed to following the plan that God had for them. To uncover God’s Will they used a spiritual technique that Ignatius developed in his retreat at Manresa: “The Discernment of Spirits.” 


Now that I’ve paid my respects to Father Ignatius, let me look at the actual process of what he called “The Discernment”  to see if there is a way for someone who does not hold to the religious tenets of Christianity to use his methodology--yes, even a person with a more rational mind set to access more information about his or her decision making process to come to a workable decision about a course of action. I suggest that using the methodology of Ignatius might allow us to listen to our deepest emotions without allowing them to hijack our decision making process.


Ignatius lays out two sets of 14 “rules” for making a choice. I have tried to remain faithful to the spirit of Ignatius while simplifying them. I’ve also bypassed Ignatius’s insistence on conformity with the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church.


Ignatius invites us to weigh what he calls “Consolation” and “Desolation” regarding a specific course of action over a period of time. Ignatius believed that the forces of good and evil are at war inside you. They try to sway you. Our job in prayer is to observe the battle, to sort out the emotions and eventually to allow the correct decision to emerge.


I’ve used the word emotions here, and I think that discerning what our deepest emotions are telling us might be a useful way to look at what Ignatius calls “spirits.” Consolation indicates a feeling of peace and contentment, while desolation points to upset, even revulsion, perhaps even the feelings we might normally associate with depression. When we feel at peace, “consoled,” we are aware that we are on the right path, but when we feel uneasy, we sense that we are treading a path that leads to uncertainty or even harm, emotional or physical. 


However, our past experience has educated us, colored our emotions and conditioned us to behave in a certain way. We are aware of some of this conditioning but a great deal remains unconscious. A note of caution here: we are not engaging on a course of psychotherapy, and while it may be useful to uncover and deal with the emotional undercurrents of our past, I think that in ordinary circumstances, weighing what our emotions tell us about a course of action does not require this level of analysis. 


Allowing our deep emotional responses to inform our decision does however require a kind of detachment. And in order for this process to unfold, Ignatius recommends that we not jump into a major decision impulsively. Rather he would like us to weigh what I’m going to call our inner movements. Allowing our deepest emotional instincts to have a voice in our decision making, might be closer to what’s called in modern psychology “emotional intelligence.”


Let me give an example. Let’s suppose that I have a friend with whom I’m deeply in love. I think we can all agree that love is an extremely powerful emotion, one that can dictate our actions in both positive and negative ways. My friend tells me that he has to move to another city for a long period and that our relationship will have to endure that separation. This seems at first to be a circumstance beyond my personal control.


But suddenly the thought crosses my mind: I will just follow him or her. The motivation is love. What could possibly go wrong? Lots. But there’s also the possibility that the move might also open the gate to new rich experiences and a wonderful new side to our relationship.


So now let’s set aside some thoughtful time to “discern the spirits,” to weigh the emotional impulses that are driving the decision and see if we can sort them out. A lot of people would counsel “weighing the pro’s and con’s.” The process might include making lists with the both positive and negative consequences: shifting house, disruption of our normal daily routine, work and financial realities, readjusting close personal ties. Of course, make a list. Evaluate each possibility.


But Ignatius would, I think, ask us to take another step. Let’s say for the sake of the example, that most of the practical issues could be easily resolved, that the actual shifting were possible, that money would not be an issue, that family and friends support the decision, but we are still undecided. He would ask us to take the decision to prayer and seek a deeper answer. 


What might this look like, even for a non-religious person, who would like to explore the possibilities of the move in a deeper way? First we would formulate the proposition: “I will move to another city to be with this person I am in love with.” And then with our mind as quiet as possible, we allow the feelings and emotions to arise, without judging them. I cannot predict what might happen in an individual case, but let’s just take an obvious one: The overwhelming emotion is to simply pick up and move. But that’s followed by what seems to be an equally overwhelming fear that things might go wrong, that the added strain would distort my relationship and my friend would reject me. It’s possible. 


A series of emotions arise, and they are a jumble. But somehow, if we are able to neither reject or push them away, over a period of time, they begin to sort themselves, and the picture becomes more clear. Perhaps we decide to move, or perhaps we decide to stay, but in either case, it comes with much stronger determination that we have tapped a deep source of inner strength to follow through and take whatever steps are required to fulfill our plan.


I think that Father Ignatius would be pleased that his inspiration allowed us to open up new possibilities in our own life even if dismayed that we have decided to remain agnostic with regard to his theological claims.








Wednesday, May 13, 2020

The Beginnings of a Christian-Zen Bibliography

Abe, Masao, "Emptiness Is Suchness" in The Buddha Eye, edited by Frederick Franck. NY: Crossroad, 1982


Abe, Masao, Zen and Western Thought. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1985

Abe, Masao, "John Cobb's Beyond Dialogue" in The Eastern Buddhist, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, Spring 1985

Aquinas, St. Thomas, On Being and Essence. Toronto, Canada, The Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1949 (out of print)

Aquinas on Being and Essence: A Translation and Interpretation, Joseph Bobik and St. Thomas Aquinas, May 31, 2016

Carlo, William E., The Ultimate Reducibility of Essence to Existence in Existential Metaphysics. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966

Clarke, W. Norris, "What Cannot Be Said in St. Thomas' Essence-Existence Doctrine" in The New Scholasticism. Baltimore: American Catholic Philosophical Association, 1974

Cobb, John B., Jr. John B. Cobb, Beyond Dialogue - Toward a Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism. Jul 30, 1998

Cook, Francis H., "The Second Buddhist Christian Theological Encounter: A Report" in The Eastern Buddhist, Vol. XIX, No. 1, Spring 1986

de Finance, Joseph, Etre et Agir. Paris, Beauchesne et ses fils, éditeurs, 1945

de Mello, Anthony, Sadhana: A Way to God. St. Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1978

Dumoulin, Heinrich, Christianity Meets Buddhism. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1974

Eusden, John Dykstra, Zen and Christian: The Journey Between. NY: Crossroad, 1981

Fabro, Cornelio, La Nozione Metafisica di Partecipazione. Torino: Società editrice internationale, 1950

Fields, Rick, How the Swans Came to the Lake. Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1981

Gardeil, le Pilre A., La structure de l'ame et L'expérience Mystique. Paris: Librairie Victor Lecoffre, 1927

Gardet, Louis and Olivier Lacombe, L'expérience du soi. Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1981(only the Italian version in print)

Gardet, Louis, Etudes de philosophie et de Mystique comparées. Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1972 (out of print)

Gilkey, Langdon, "Abe Masao's Zen and Western Thought" in The Eastern Buddhist, Vol. XIX, No. 2, Autumn 1986

Gilson, Etienne, Being and Some Philosophers. Toronto, Canada: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1949

Graham, Dom Aelred, Zen Catholicism. HBJ, 1963

Habito, Ruben L.F., Living Zen, Loving God. Wisdom Publications, 2004

Heisig, James, "East-West Dialogue: Sunyata and Kenosis" in Spirituality Today, Vol. 39, No. 2, Summer 1987 and Vol. 39, No. 3, Autumn 1987

Izutsu, Toshihiko, Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism. Shambala, 2001

John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel. Translated and edited by E. Allison Peers. Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1958; reissued Dover, ,2008

Johnson, William, Christian Zen: A Way of Meditation. NY: Harper Row, 1981 (out of print)

Johnson, William, The Still Point, Reflections on Zen and Christian Mysticism. NY:Fordham University Press, 1970 (difficult to find)

Kadowaki, J.K., Zen and the Bible. NY: Routledge & Kegan, 1980

Kadowaki, Kakichi, "Ways of Knowing: A Buddhist-Thomist Dialogue" in International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. VI, No. 4, Dec. 1966

Kalinowski, Jerzy and Stefan Swiezawski, La philosophie à l'heure du Concile. Paris: Société d'Editions Internationales, 1965; Press IPC, 2014

Kishi, Rev. Augustin Hideshi, Spiritual Consciousness in Zen from a Thomistic Theological Point of View. Nishinomiya-shi, Japan: Catholic Bishop's House of Osaka, 1966. PDF available from Merton Center Digital Collections.

Lassalle, H.M. Enomiya, Zen Meditation for Christians. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1974 (out of print)

Lassalle, H.M. Enomiya, The Practice of Zen Meditation, Thorsons, 1990

Maritain, Jacques, "Lettre sur la philosophie a l'heure du concile" in Approches Sans Entraves. Paris: Fayard, 1973 (out of print)

Maritain, Jacques, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism. NY: New York Philosophical Library, 1955; University of Notre Dame Press, 2007

Maritain, Jacques, Existence and the Existent. Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1948; Paulist Press, 2015

Maritain, Jacques, Notebooks. Albany, NY: Magi Books, Inc., 1984

Maritain, Jacques, The Peasant of the Garonne. NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968

Merton, Thomas, Zen and the Birds of Appetite. New Directions Paperback 1968; 2010

Nishitani, Keiji, Religion and Nothingness. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982; 1983

O'Hanlon, Daniel, "Zen and the Spiritual Exercises: A Dialogue Between Faiths" in Theological Studies, Vol. 39, No. 4, Dec. 1978.

Senko, W., "Un traité inconnu 'De esse et essentia'" in Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen âge, 27. Paris: Libraire Philosophique J. Vrin, 1961 (not in print)

Shizuteru, Ueda, ""Nothingness" in Meister Eckhart and Zen Buddhism" in The Buddha Eye, edited by Frederick Franck. NY: Crossroad, 1982; World Wisdom PDF

Spae, Joseph J., Buddhist-Christian Empathy. Chicago: The Chicago Institute of Theology and Culture, 1980

Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, "Self the Unattainable" in The Buddha Eye, edited by Frederick Franck. NY: Crossroad, 1982. University Press, 2015

Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, "The Buddhist Conception of Reality" in The Buddha Eye, edited by Frederick Franck. NY: Crossroad, 1982; Selected Works of D.T. Suzuki, Volume I: Zen, University of California Press, 2020

Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, "What Is the "I"?" in The Buddha Eye, edited by Frederick Franck. NY: Crossroad, 1982

Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism. London: Arrow Books Ltd, 1959; Mass Market Paperback, 1964

Waidenfels, Hans, Absolute Nothingness: Foundations for a Buddhist-Christian Dialogue (Studies in Japanese Philosophy) Nanzan Studies in Religion and Culture, 1980; Chisokudō Publications, 2020

Yamaguchi, Minoru, The intuition of Zen and Bergson: Comparative intellectual approach to Zen, reason of divergences between East and West. Herder Agency. Enderle Bookstore, 1969





Friday, March 27, 2020

Nanso no Ho practice or “soft-ointment meditation”

Nanso No Ho, or “soft-ointment meditation,” is a 'naikan' (transformation) practice originally taught by Zen master Hakuin Zenji (1689-1768) as he describes it in Yasen Kanna [translation by Norman Waddell]

"Imagine that a lump of soft butter, pure in color and fragrance and the size and shape of a duck egg, is suddenly placed on the top of your head. As it begins to slowly melt, it imparts an exquisite sensation, moistening and saturating your head within and without. It continues to ooze down, moistening your shoulders, elbows, and chest; permeating lungs, diaphragm, liver, stomach, and bowels; moving down the spine through the hips, pelvis, and buttocks. At that point, all the congestions that have accumulated within the five organs and six viscera, all the aches and pains in the abdomen and other affected parts, will follow the heart as it sinks downward into the lower body. As it does, you will distinctly hear a sound like that of water trickling from a higher to a lower place. It will move lower down through the lower body, suffusing the legs with beneficial warmth, until it reaches the soles of the feet, where it stops.

"The student should then repeat the contemplation. As his vital energy flows downward, it gradually fills the lower region of the body, suffusing it with penetrating warmth, making him feel as if he were sitting up to his navel in a hot bath filled with a decoction of rare and fragrant medicinal herbs that have been gathered and infused by a skilled physician.

"Inasmuch as all things are created by the mind, when you engage in this contemplation, the nose will actually smell the marvelous scent of pure, soft butter; your body will feel the exquisite sensation of its melting touch. Your body and mind will be in perfect peace and harmony. You will feel better and enjoy greater health than you did as a youth of twenty or thirty. At this time, all the undesirable accumulations in your vital organs and viscera will melt away. Stomach and bowels will function perfectly. Before you know it, your skin will glow with health.

"If you continue to practice the contemplation with diligence, there is no illness that cannot be cured, no virtue that cannot be acquired, no level of sage hood that cannot be reached, no religious practice that cannot be mastered. Whether such results appear swiftly or slowly depends only upon how scrupulously you apply yourself."


Buddhist Heaven

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