Author Archives: Genju

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stillness of a river: book review of Sid by anita n. feng

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Sid by Anita N. Feng is a surprisingly well crafted telling of the traditional story of the Buddha’s life alongside a contemporary version set a Western life.  It’s a risky undertaking: this attempt to demonstrate The Awakened One’s tale can be taken from the lofty allegories of becoming the Enobled One and make it applicable to the quotidian. The transformation from Siddhartha to Gautama Buddha is entrenched in details of its own, mythologies, and narratives that demand suspension of disbelief. And they have been re-written often, mostly with attempts to make the Enlightened Him more human – as if the very point of the root narrative wasn’t to showcase his deep humanity.

I avoided buying this book for those very reasons. After Chopra’s McPyschology attempt at interpreting the Buddha’s story, there seemed little need to wander back into that genre. But it arrived, unrequested, a solitary little package from what is likely my favourite publisher of Buddhist books, Wisdom Publications. (That’s full disclosure and then some!)

Feng enters into a lineage of authors who have tried to recast in modern terms this storyline of birth, loss, suffering, and death. But I think this is the only one that runs a parallel story to the main narrative. Hermann Hesse did so in the much beloved Siddhartha; however the characters were contemporaries and it ran more as an alternate universe: “what if the Buddha met himself across a time warp.” The writing in Sid, unlike Hesse’s romantic lyrics, has an unaffected tone that makes the slide from one stage to another easy and one goes along willingly. And stages there are. Like a Shakespearean play, we are carried from the stage with Suddhodana, Siddhartha, and Avalokitesvara to one with Professor Sudovsky, Sid, and Ava; from Yasodhara to Yasmin; from Siddhartha’s Rahula to Sid’s Rahula (this last a fascinating convergence of lineages). With a nod to the Jataka Tales, animals fill in narrative gaps like the Chorus of a Greek tragedy – observing, commenting, and imparting their wisdom. And with a deep bow to an honourable lineage, Feng offers homage to Hesse’s river that is the final teacher of Siddhartha and Sid in their last pages.

This isn’t an interweaving of two stories and perhaps those who attempt to do so fail because of the artifice of a forced relevance. These are life events that can unfold anywhere in any time. That, at its heart, is the intent of understanding the Buddha’s life. Of course, the book can be read as a sequence of the Buddha’s life in 4th c. B.C.E. followed by Sid’s life in the 21st c. C.E. – interesting and sufficient to feel reassured that nothing changes. It can also be, in some way that only physics can explain, contemporaneous stories whose details grip us for different reasons – a recognition that in stillness everything changes and in movement nothing changes.

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sawaki kôdô & yokoyama: unexpected mercies of homelessness

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Perhaps one of my most beloved source of teachings comes from the story of Yokoyama Sodô roshi, the grass flute monk. Arthur Braverman wrote of his life here. There is something ephemeral about the life and teachings of Yokoyama, a simplicity and dedication that often escapes us in our plunge forward into making practice something. Following the bloodline back from Yokoyama, we encounter his teacher Sawaki Kôdô roshi known as Homeless Kôdô. This moniker was not just a reference to his tendency to wander Japan teaching but also – if you read The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kôdô by Kosho Uchiyama and Shokaku Okumura (Wisdom Publications) – is reflected in his very perspective of the dharma. Yokoyama evokes a tender compassion for his approach to offering the dharma freely to everyone who walked past his corner of Kaikoen Park in Komoro; we feel ourselves leaning into that bower of leaves to hear his teachings. Sawaki evokes a fierceness born of his own experiences as a soldier fighting for the emperor and that he believed was right to do so as well as his ardent rejection of all things institutional. This determined attitude is in his words (leeway given for translation) on the purpose of the Buddhadharma:

A religion that has nothing to do with our fundamental attitude toward our lives is nonsense. Buddhadharma is a religion that teaches us how to return to a true way of life. “Subduing non-Buddhists,” or converting people, means helping them transform their lives from a half-baked, incomplete way to a genuine way. ~Chapter 2, Having finally returned to a true way of life, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kôdô by Kosho Uchiyama and Shokaku Okumura.

No minced words here. Left to themselves, Sawaki’s teachings can seem harsh, strangely naive, and yet necessary truths about our “stupidity”. The structure of this book however offers different intonations for his words. Each chapter is presented with Sawaki’s teachings in a pithy quotable quote followed by his dharma heir Uchiyama’s commentary and then his heir Shohaku Okumura. Both Uchiyama and Okumura place Sawaki’s teachings in the context of post-war Japan and the culture that arose after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They make no apologies for Sawaki rather pointing out that even in a great master’s teachings there lie the foibles of constructed perceptions. And there is a sweetness in seeing three generations of thought evolve. Should you wish to walk away now thinking this is a book of teachings by an irascible, aged, male, grumpy, old Zen Guy, turn into that particular assumption. Not that we judge but rather that the judgement arises from a reactivity to some very real truths in being told we can be deaf, dumb, and blind about our motivations that transcend gender, culture, and time.

Sawaki: Heaven and earth make offerings. Air, water, plants, animals and human beings make offerings. All things make offerings to each other. It’s only within the circle of offering that we can live. Whether we approach this or not, it’s true.

Uchiyama: Heaven and earth, all the ten thousand things freely give us 99.99 percent of our necessities. Only 0.01 percent of the things we need are subject to our decisions whether to be greedy or not. (And even that) we should make efforts to reduce.

Okumura: However, Buddhism is not merely a teaching of social morality. If our deeper motivation is greed, then no matter how much we give our actions cannot be dana paramita, the perfection of offering… Yet if we take bodhisattva vows, our whole life becomes an offering, even if we have no material possessions to give.  ~Chapter 63, The blessing of the universe, ibid.

Yokoyama and Sawaki Kôdô lived very different lives. Who is to say which is better or which had more impact. What is more relevant is our attraction to one or the other. Or neither. Experiencing that moving towards, pulling away is the essence of Buddhadharma, the kindling point of our transformation. Not because we land on one or the other’s way of life – that way lies guru adoration and the cult of personality. To experience that desire for homelessness, for simplicity, for a life struck through with offering is also to experience our desires, motivations, and intentions in all its fallibility and unexpected mercies.