Author Archives: Genju

Unknown's avatar

the industry of zen & buddhism

by

Ah! There you are*.

I’m rather chagrined to discover I’ve been MIA for almost a month.  There are no excuses but many reasons; and as I type I’m scrolling through my eCalendar to wow you with some of the amazing accomplishments that have come to pass in these three or four weeks.  Well, perhaps I overstate myself.  It seems the biggest accomplishment has been that I got through the weeks, day-by-day, moment-by-moment, only arrive right here where I began three years ago.

Over those weeks, days, and moments, a challenging question has been worming its way through my mind: Is this Zen?  Is this even Buddhism?  Perhaps this is a poorly conceptualized version of the more powerful question, What is this?  What is this?  Or perhaps this is an important space to open up (again) that cultivates the discernment between the Industry of Zen/Buddhism and the embodiment of it.

Not-Zen/Not-Buddhism is typically easy to spot albeit not easy to resist.  Beer labels, perfumes, furniture, bars, restaurants, clothing, and most objects can safely be tagged “Not-Zen.”  However, it is useful to consider that the intent of using the term for a product is to increase sales through a subtle promise of a mind-state.  And yet, if that is the case, perhaps we find ourselves reduced absurdly to include things like books, audio files, dharma talks, zafus, zabutons (and the love of words most people in our life circles would neither understand nor use in daily discourse), and even dharma teachers, priests, temples, zendos, and the odd kit with kaboodle.

Is that absurd?  I’m beginning to think not.  It’s been my observation that when we first encounter something which fulfills the promise of a mind-state more easeful than the wild, vicious, tumultuous one we inhabit out of habit, we quickly slip from the embodiment of that state to the Industry of what promises to accomplish that state.  Meditation helps you feel calmer?  Great!  Sit longer, download more meditation tracks!  Buddhism explains the state of your world?  Awesome!  Get a few more books, buy a few more buddha statues to fill the spaces!  The world too filled with distraction and pain?  Great!  Go on more retreats, enforce more silence in your schedule!

The sad thing is I don’t think I’m exaggerating.  The early stages of the path are filled with opportunity to be infatuated with what we think is Zen and Buddhism but which, on closer examination, is only a promise heard in a moment of desperation.  And what a seductive promise it is with its purring engine and fine, fine aerodynamic lines!  The vehicle of Buddhism – especially the Zen model rolling off the production lines – has us begging for the keys.  And we fall prey to the Industry of Buddhism which is in fact the after-market industry and occasionally comes frighteningly close to “Pimp My Ride.”

But in the fine print of the ownership papers lies the true intention for taking this baby out for a spin.  The intent of Buddhism in general and Zen in particular  is – and has always been – embodying  openness to the dynamic between our experience and our avoidance of it.  There’s no promise of elevated mind-states or visceral joy in catharsis in the fine print.  There is only bearing witness to the slip-slide-skid and the compassionate action of turning into that skid.  And yes, there are some forms in practice that facilitate our skillfulness to embody its intent.  However, and sadly so, the more enamoured we are of specific forms of practice – be it meditation, insight cultivation, retreats, or what have you – the easier it is for the Industry of Buddhism to aid and abet our avoidance of who we are in this and every moment.

______________

*This is our little ghost cat, Desirée.  She’s 14 years old and this is first time she’s allowed me to cuddle her.

Unknown's avatar

entering zen: the wabi-sabi of practice

by

GRATITUDE

Whatever it is,
I cannot understand it,
although gratitude
stubbornly overcomes me
until I’m reduced to tears.

Saigyo

Entering Zen by Ben Howard is one of those stealthy books that can overcome you page by quiet page.  And at times, as I read it in a cabin tucked into the misty Catskills, it did reduce me to tears.  There is a simplicity in Howard’s words, something that makes this book and his blog posts (One Time, One Meeting ) a place of exploration that is simultaneously safe and challenging to enter.

These 75 essays offer teachings on Zen that show the practice as basic yet intricate, ordinary yet elegant.  To shine these jewels of practice, Howard draws from his immense knowledge and wisdom of literature, poetry, Buddhist practice, and an intimacy with his own life.  The tone of each chapter is by turn filled with delight at a child’s creativity, nostalgic for ways of living long gone, and delicate in unfolding a complex concept like sabi or wabi sabi.

Weathered Wood, the chapter which does the latter, is likely my favourite because Howard draws us in with a lovely poignant explanation of sabi and extends it to an appreciation of how our lives progress as a “bloom of time.”  He teaches from the wisdom of Tadao Ando, an architect:

Sabi by itself means “the bloom of time.”  It connotes natural progression – tarnish, hoariness, rust – the extinguished gloss of that which once sparkled.  It’s the understanding that beauty is fleeting…Sabi things carry the burden of their years with dignity and grace: the chilly mottled surface of an oxidized silver bowl, the yielding gray of weathered wood, the elegant withering of a bereft autumn bough.

Howard goes on to point out that sabi carries a suggestion of imperfection.  This is not the imperfection of wrongness or improper creation;  it is the imperfection that confirms the authenticity of a life being lived.  And this is the heart of Zen practice: the confirmation that an authentic life is one lived intimately with the truth of imperfection.

Throughout the book, Howard writes with an ease that comes from his skill as a teacher of English Literature, a musician, and his long-standing practice with different teachers.  He brings out the wisdom and compassion of Dogen, Jack Kornfield, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Toni Packer with the same precise skill as what he extracts from poets Seamus Heany, Mary Oliver, and Gary Snyder.  It can be intimidating and somehow Howard manages to make the accessibility of the complexities of the dharma seem to be our own wisdom.  And, his consternation at vanity plates that say “ME” notwithstanding, I do feel the urge to whisper at the end of each chapter, “I did it!”

As the current trend in Buddhist writings leans towards snappy phrases and promises of liberation by the last chapter, Howard’s writings are refreshingly honest.  Practice takes effort.  It is worthy of our attention.  It grants us “refuge… more dependable than any bank and more durable than any mountain.”  It is no more or less than this, just this.