Tag Archives: book review

Written within stones: Lockdowns, Chittadhar & the epic of the Buddha

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We’re approaching the end of 2020. When the year began I had little to warn me of the massive changes to come, in my life and writ large on the global tablet. Ten months. How did you fare? As we enter the next year, what have you let go of and what was taken from you/not you? What have you picked up and what have you woven a new into your life practice?

Has your life become an epic you could write about in captivity?

In February, I started a new path of practice: gardening. Enrolled in the Master Gardener program at Dalhousie University, I was well-armed with cardboard germination trays, potting soil, seeds, and batches of fertilizer for an experiment in nutrient impact on sunflowers. As each seed germinated and cast off the seed case, I would cheer them on! Because I tend to over-identify with my plants, when one little one remained stuck in the seed case, I agonized about releasing it or letting nature take its course. Perhaps nature is equanimous or indifferent; that’s a fine line to discern. Perhaps I tend to express wishful thinking as wise and discerning hope.

I set the little cotyledons free one morning and noted studiously that being held captive longer than its siblings, the lack of exposure to light had left its core streaked. I doted on it as it sprouted its true leaves – a fascinating realization that the first leaves or cotyledons are part of the embryonic package with the endosperm. No seriously, I was obsessed with this little plant. It was a labour of attending without power to effect any directional change. And the lesson was in the attention to those streaks of yellow as they did their job of nourishing the plant.

There must be an epic poem in this or even that Next Book. Alas, as the lockdowns and restrictions wore on my time was diverted to reactivating my work to online meetings and tending the vegetable garden.

However, the season of flowers and fruit taught me that being enclosed in safety is not sufficient for the germination of creative expression. It’s easy to fall into the mundane, distract with a sidebar of progress, or be absorbed into the constructed drama of rights and liberties. Try as we might, we cannot isolate ourselves from the tremendous tragedies, losses of lives and livelihood. The societal fractures that lay just below the surface, that persistently emerged pre-pandemic and were quickly dismissed as special-interest dramas are now inescapable for their truth – unless one wears one’s mask over the inner eye. Forced awake in the last ten months and in seeking safety through self-isolation, we have discovered that the true nature of safety is not in the external stones of our lives. It is in the choices we make with the intention to save all beings – from our darkest nature, from the consequences of our reactivity and ignorance. Under pressure, we forget that every thought, speech, and action is a gift we have given and received.

Yangshan said: Do not betray (what you have received by people’s support)… when it is cold, to wear socks for others is not prohibited.

(Case 47 Shōbōgenzō)

In gardening terms, the cotyledons have done their job giving us the energy to start. It is time to become nourishment for ourselves and others. For that, we will have to adapt, evolve, find the light, and turn towards it.

Now to Chittadhar Hrdaya. A Newari writer/poet in Nepal, he was imprisoned in 1940 for writing a poem titled “Mother”. The police considered it seditious claiming it was intended to accuse the government of “depriving the Newars of their mother tongue.” Despite Hrdaya’s insistence that the poem expressed his grief over the loss of his mother, he was sentenced to six years imprisonment. Initially depressed by the sentence, he responded to the death of his mentor a year later by committing to writing again. Under somewhat improved conditions in the second year of his imprisonment, he began to write the story of the Buddha’s life on scraps of paper torn from his prayerbook. These were smuggled out in food boxes that had a false lid. Published after his release in 1946, it became part of the surge in publishing when the Newari gained the freedom to publish in their own language.

The Epic of the Buddha or Sugata Saurabha (“The Sweet Fragrance of the Buddha”; Shambhala Publications) is a vibrant and lyrical poem of couplets. The rhythm and pace of the words (translated wonderfully into English by Todd Lewis and Subarna Man Tuladhar) conjure movement in every stanza. From the first chapter, Lumbini, to Entry into Nirvana, it flows breath after breath. The chapter, Yashodarā, is deeply moving as it begins with her heart-rending discovery that her beloved has gone. In fact, it is a welcomed view that the Buddha’s actions had painful consequences – an understanding not often explored. Initially, she is filled with fears that “something happened to the Noble One.” She progresses through consigning his absence to a “cruel fate”, trying to find solace in her newborn yet feeling abandoned to raising him without a father, hope when Chandaka returns, and rage when it is apparent her beloved is not with him. Yasodarā’s progression from the security of love to the realization that she had a higher calling is the moral teachings we need.

In Devadatta’s Sacrilege, Chittadhar gives new life to the story of the grieving mother who wanted the Buddha to bring her child back to life. In her pleading words, we see the investment we make in others – children, spouses, colleagues – to create a present and future reality for us. We discern that the “just world hypothesis” is deeply ingrained in our beliefs of reward- & blame-worthiness. The later sections of this chapter focus on the many ways Devadatta pours poison in the ears of the vulnerable and insecure around him. Again, intentions, actions, and consequences.

This is a book to savour. Place it on the shelf beside you. Pick it up and relish a chapter, a stanza, a couplet. It’s not fast food, take-out, or even a well-prepared dinner that’s done in a few minutes. It’s a cotyledon, willing to give its energy for our growth and later to nourish us through the winter into spring.

And, put on your socks – for yourself and others.

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!)