Category Archives: book reviews

The Circle of the Way by Barbara O’Brien – Behind the Scenes in Zen-dom (book review)

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The Circle of the Way by Barbara O’Brien (Shambhala Publications)

The Circle of the Way by Barbara O’Brien (Shambhala Publications) is an ambitious attempt to accomplish two key approaches in understanding Buddhist history. as our perspectives of Buddhism have broadened (and hopefully also deepen). First, the re-telling of Buddhist history is marked by a dropping off unexamined stories as we acknowledge and cope with its romanticization and impact of its appropriation by the West. Second, as we become more aware of the complex intersectionality of our inner and outer environments, aspects of Buddhist philosophy and practices that may not address the issues in our times are being deeply questioned.

Academic and popular press publications in the last few years have been sharp examinations of what we think are the roots of Buddhism and reshaped what we believe are its principles. Author/scholars like David McMahan, Erik Braun, and Ann Gleig have provided incisive and insightful challenges to Western views and uses of Buddhism. Ira Helderman and Candy Gunther Brown have brought attention to naivete in thinking that the complex religious and sometimes political field of Buddhism can be neatly flipped into Western psychological practices with impunity.

This is a time of choppy waters and sudden storms whether one is a historian, researcher, practitioner, or student of Western Buddhism. In this context, O’Brien’s book is a brave one, especially if we place it in the lineage of previous authors who tried to make sense of the fables and enduring mythology of Zen history.

In the introduction, she confronts head-on the muddiness of Zen history, the knowledge we prefer to have avoided: broken lineages, (purposely?) muddied history, dogma, assumptions of a linear progression from Theravada to Mahayana – even the assumptions that the latter is the evolution away from a less developed form of Buddhism. Of course, there’s also the erasure of the feminine lineage, the wise women of Zen. (While searching for the published books on Zen women, I happened across this blog, Zen Women.) This is a lot to take on and I’m tentative about saying that O’Brien, despite being a scholar in the field, does it all to the degree that is required. Then again, I doubt any historian committed to a transparent investigation of several thousand years of the history of anything could do full justice to the topic.

The first two chapters offer a rich and complex story of Buddhism and then Zen. More particularly, it places “The Six (or so) Patriarchs” in the context of a wildly developing region whose political capriciousness is as much Zen-ish as are the teachings and teachers who cooked in that broth. When O’Brien describes Zen as it made its way through China’s geography and political turmoil, the going gets a bit rough. There’s too much to put into the chapters and the interactions become complex. It’s not a criticism of the author as an acknowledgment that trying to convey this part of history as a thick understanding is difficult for reasons that lie in the modern mind.

First, we do love our thin slices of Zen history, the dramatis personna and their perplexing statements of our quality of mind. The wild, often inebriated teachers, chopping off arms and fingers, cutting up felines and making perplexing exits with slippers as hats have appeal far more than the emperors, concubines, and their progeny who stymied or advanced Buddhism.

Second, we love a linear, logical progression in both our lives and those of others. We also love a Just World where the good are rewarded and bad punished. That it contradicts all manner of understanding of Buddhism in general and karma, in particular, is a cheap delusion. The messiness of Buddhism’s history means no one has the right view but it is, itself, a Right View. And that in turn means, we need to stop waving our mind flags and get down to the real work of Buddhist practice.

O’Brien has made a valiant effort and the challenge of getting through the middle part of the book is a personal one. I am too much a fan of the brazenness of Ikkyu and the morose Dogen. So, I do encourage you, Dear Reader, to persist through to the last chapter, Zen in the Modern World. Or perhaps, start there at the finish. If we can tolerate a different view of our perspectives of our present history, moving back in time may not be so discomforting. (Spoiler: O’Brien thankfully does not give the current cultism of secular or what a colleague calls “bubblegum mindfulness” any space. I’m grateful!)

Book Review: Just Enough – more than just a cookbook.

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Gesshin Claire Greenwood, author of Just Enough: Vegan recipes and stories from Japan’s Buddhist temples and the popular blog , That’s So Zen, has put together a tantalizing book of practice disguised as a cookbook. Taking a page out of her blog post, How to Hack an Academic Book, I will admit I stayed close to the tasty parts of each chapter and tended the file the recipes away for a kitchen test in the future.

Greenwood writes with a delicious style, never pushing the components of her experience or expecting them to zap us with insight and release from suffering. But maybe they do because I did have several moments about broth, bamboo, and ramen noodles.

SIDEBAR: My Grandestdaughter called me on the “last evening I will be 5, Pika,” to explain that being six the next day would involve “rum and noodles!” I understand my daughter has taken her cooking skills to enviable heights but this modern parenting seems excessively licentious.

Greenwood was an ordained nun in a Japanese temple and writes with an ease and flow that speaks well of her embodied practice. To my joy, she begins with oryoki – likely my favourite part of a sesshin and the most challenging for someone with an approach-avoidance relationship to food. In her hands, the ritual of eating from three (or five) bowls becomes a practice of experiencing “just enough” and an art of finding freedom in ritual. In Broth, she walks us through the very potent sense of the “stink of Zen”; I emerged too afraid to check the miso paste in my fridge. Still, it is a powerful truth that if your Zen practice dominates the landscape of your life, it’s likely not your life anymore. And, much of Just Enough – as with any cooking – is about reclaiming our life slice by slice.

So, we “practice in secret, like a fool, like an idiot”, freeing ourselves of the chaotic circumstances of mind and environment. Then, as she instructs the cooks in Bamboo, we learn how to transform the ingredients of our life that are by nature poisonous into nourishing delicacies. Relationships are prominent in Greenwood’s book. Naturally. After all, what is Zen if not relational. What is any practice if not relational. How else can we adapt without an irritation, a bruise, a graze of whatever will scrape the peel off, soften the tough shell of Self.

Just Enough Lust is delightful if only for the deep truth that “life is too short to eat plain cabbage dumplings.” No, seriously. It’s not long enough to wash out the bland of spiceless, limp, dough boiled to imperfection. (Try some harissa or Korean red peppers, btw!) And it’s about balance. Circling back to Broth, Greenwood teaches the value of using ingredients in a way that they are almost “too much but not too much.” Now that’s a lifetime practice.

SIDEBAR: My mother eventually became an amazing cook. None of us could replicate her dishes no matter how much time she spent showing us what to do. Her instructions were always “just put a teaspoon” of (whatever spice) into the (whatever dish it was). She used a plastic spoon from some picnic we must have gone to, clearly a magic spoon, and coveted by all the generations. When I decided to calibrate it – yes, I’m that obsessive – everyone laughed, until we discovered the “teaspoon” actually held a tablespoon of spices.

Greenwood’s point is not to make us terrific Japanese vegan cooks. That would be lovely but perhaps an unrealistic expectation. In Ramen, she argues* for a “throwing away” of our preconceptions of how a dish should turn out or how our life should turn out. It touches on that sense of entitlement we all have about our right to have X-Y-Z because we did U-V-W. As if life is ever that linear and compliant.

Life, like practice and cooking, is best approached with abandon, spiced with an apprentice-mind and a willingness also to let go of incompatible ingredients. When Zen, recipes, and personality become a protective gear against being vulnerable and open to that one continuous mistake, it’s time to find fire the the stove and cooking.

*In How to Hack an Academic Book, Greenwood writes: “2. Hunt for the phrase “I argue” in the introduction.” I didn’t put this in the Introduction.