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description= 6 posts published by koun during May 2012;
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share, this, zen, the, archives, post, navigation, and, at, of, nyoho, nyohō, monthly, may, 2012, it, really, is, who, you, know, that, not, cultural, preservation, eating, for, more, than, two, glance, bowing, scene, crime, follow, by, mail, koun, elsewhere, online, topics, look, feel, stuff, dharma,
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the (356), that (227), and (185), zen (95), this (84), but (84), not (84), all (62), what (61), was (60), for (60), you (52), are (50), about (49), one (47), with (45), buddha (44), just (44), they (44), can (37), practice (35), like (33), have (32), beings (32), how (32), when (29), our (29), there (29), then (27), zazen (27), buddhism (26), even (26), from (25), something (25), more (24), who (24), his (24), new (23), has (22), japanese (22), people (22), don (22), world (21), had (21), share (20), teachers (20), window (19), say (19), opens (18), see (18), would (18), altar (17), out (17), culture (17), may (16), think (16), those (16), much (16), very (16), know (16), some (16), japan (15), friend (15), him (15), which (15), feel (15), being (15), email (14), where (14), time (14), way (14), own (14), been (14), right (14), thing (14), most (13), little (13), these (13), were (13), take (13), kind (13), also (13), their (13), now (12), other (12), print (12), reddit (12), different 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Text of the page (random words):
ross the world in philadelphia my older brother bryan had been turned on to meditation he was completely hooked we d talk about it on the phone verbally high fiving congratulating each other on our discovery then he came to visit me in japan twice a day he would lock himself in the bathroom to meditate it drove me crazy we were arranging our schedule around it and at some point i complained a little or at least suggested that maybe he could skip it once in a while he thought about it and looked at my little buddha statue and relatively untouched zafu in the corner and he said something like this the thing is if you really believe these teachings are true then by definition you believe they re the most important thing in the world you have to respond i have to meditate if you don t feel you have to act on these teachings then by definition you don t really believe them he raised his eyebrows and looked me in the eyes for a little too long am i right bryan claims he doesn t remember this conversation but for me it was a big moment one i doubt i ll ever totally shake off by that time i d been identifying with zen for about four years and actually sitting for almost as long but i had never once put myself in a situation where someone could call me on my self serving approach to it all i d never once put myself and my ego in a situation that was the least bit unsafe at least not in relationship to practice i d created a story about myself and i liked it and i invited no one to challenge it this is what teachers are for we need to make ourselves vulnerable to that gaze that honesty we need to decide that we want that when i was twenty one i didn t have a teacher only a few people could have said what needed to be said and my big brother was one of them maybe he was the only one it was perfect it almost made up for all those times when we were kids and he sold me my own toys or made me eat chocolate chips wrapped in american cheese or left me to watch the shining by myself in the dark at two in the morning but probably not quite share this tweet share on reddit opens in new window reddit email a link to a friend opens in new window email more print opens in new window print share on tumblr like loading 4 comments posted in uncategorized tagged fight club three pillars of zen that s not zen may 25 not long ago i was part of an e mail exchange among soto zen priests about the possibilities surrounding a new monastery being built in the us one prominent american teacher suggested it was a wasted effort and when pressed on it basically said to each his own but a monastery has nothing to do with zen laypeople in the us might be surprised to hear how much disagreement there is among american soto zen teachers not just on this point but on everything many aspects of zen practice from the bowing to the outfits to the chanting to the overall aesthetic can seem foreign at first so from the outside it may seem that most zen centers are embracing traditional forms even to a forbidding degree it can look as if everyone s basically doing the same thing but they re not not at all it s a strange thing about zen that we seem unable to define it to anyone s satisfaction the world of buddhism is huge and some directions it has taken can be surprising to say the least but removed from the question of this sect or that i think that most informed people could sit down in a room and find remarkable agreement about what defines buddhism what makes you not a buddhist by dzongsar khyentse is one example of someone attempting a basic definition and doing it quite well there would be dissent but a majority could probably come together zen just isn t like that the buddhism section and the zen section at the bookstore are so often not one and the same i have many times ranted about how ridiculous that is but it s not hard to see how it happens even many people in the zen world might not be able to see the connections in high school i wrote a paper about zen in which i referenced the buddha s four noble truths then showed it to an actual zazen sitting person to get his opinion the only comment i got was in the margin next to the noble truths part but in zen these don t apply so we can t even agree on something as seemingly basic as that for many people zen zazen period everything else is window dressing a support at best a distraction at worst it s very seductive this idea except in order to say that zen is zazen we have to then ask what is zazen what is it is it a mental exercise a physical one both neither some people say zazen includes everything while others say that if you re distracted during zazen then that s not really zazen is zazen something you do something you participate in something you express what does it even look like if you do it in a chair is that zazen when we talk about zazen reaching into every moment of the day is that a kind of resonance an influence an echo or can ordinary activities themselves actually be zazen we could probably get most people to at least agree that zazen is critical to any definition of zen but if we took that next step to define zazen it would all fall apart there s another strain of zen people who talk less about zazen and more about practice in the case of the teacher who said monasteries have nothing to do with zen part of his argument was that everything is zen it s everywhere i think what is meant by this is that zen practice is always right under our feet that practice is the practice of this moment wherever we are if so i agree completely but how do we arrive at that this is a huge idea too huge to be accepted on face value even if zen practice is always ever present implicit in that idea is the more complicated suggestion that zen practice actually is something distinct something we can learn to identify in some kind of context so that we can then recognize it outside of that place where we first discovered it that is to say even if we agree that zen is everywhere that does not mean that everywhere is zen zen is something otherwise why do we keep using the word i had a friend who used to complain only half jokingly about how much she hated dharma friends dharma friends are a kind of buddhist friend who is always jumping right over the relative to the absolute my friend my boyfriend broke up with me i m feeling so sad dharma friend who is this i who is sad but an ever changing aggregation of components which are themselves both impermanent and empty of inherent self and what is this sadness in attaching to this false idea that i am sad you re just perpetuating your own dualistic delusion here i ll lend you these great dharma talks i just downloaded to me everything is zen sounds like advice from the dharma friend even if it s true it s not useful not right now it s too removed it s an insincere response to a sincere question when i first got interested in zen i would have used these kinds of words to describe it cool rational simple creative the only word i d still use is cool i still think zen is pretty cool even if i d hit the mark these are just adjectives descriptors of a thing but not the thing adjectives don t mean that much and zen when used as an adjective means even less than most the thing called zen that i have found through teachers and training and my own inquiry is an immersive world of ritual enactment one in which we sit not like the buddha but as buddha taigen leighton s zazen as an enactment ritual from zen ritual should be required reading along with the rest of the book we don t just chant the words of our teachers teachers but we say those words as our own we bow over and over again offering ourselves not symbolically but literally completely we hold a teacup not as if we are holding all beings but as a complete act as our point of contact with all beings in that moment it is a practice with no explicit goal except to do what we are doing without reservation without hesitation completely it s deeply physical both in its requirements and in its expression the things that we hope might come from practice deepened compassion awareness mindfulness concentration whatever are not goals they are side effects that s a very different thing if this thing we call zen and more specifically the soto side of zen is definable if it is a thing then historically it has been something like what i have experienced in monasteries it has been the cultivation and preservation of that atmosphere and those traditions mostly by monks that doesn t mean that zen has not changed over time it has in significant ways that doesn t mean it won t continue to change it will nor does it mean that all the things we say about zen being relevant in ordinary modern life are untrue or that zen is everywhere is missing the mark but again when we say that we re talking about something that starts somewhere that has a shape that is recognizable for myself i am amazed when i hear zen is everywhere and then in the same breath monasteries have nothing to do with zen if you were to ask me what dance is and i told you that dance has nothing to do with dance studios or stages you might not bat an eye after all one can dance anywhere but what if i told you it had nothing to do with the body what if i told you dance was ineffable and all pervasive and part of our ordinary experience and also something that most people know nothing about i can imagine someone with a deep feeling about dance making this kind of argument but is it meaningful in this case even if this comes from a deeply felt sense by the teacher the message is that dance is just that a feeling it s something that lives only in the world of the mind an aspect of experience we either recognize or we don t you don t see dance in going to the toilet you don t see it in opening a bank account well then i guess you re not a dancer yet keep working on it that s not good enough i am hesitant to define zen to say that it is this any adequate definition will be complicated and full of words like sometimes and but also and not just limiting it by saying what it is is not the point but i will say that zen is not what we think it is which is to say zen is not the experience of zen just as zazen is not the experience of zazen it s not our ideas about it if it is something then it really is something it starts somewhere it has a taste and a feel and a look if i tell you that it s the taste in your mouth right now the feeling in your hands right now the look of what is directly in front of you right now in this moment if i tell you that i m not lying it s all true but it s also no place to start share this tweet share on reddit opens in new window reddit email a link to a friend opens in new window email more print opens in new window print share on tumblr like loading 24 comments posted in uncategorized tagged monastery ritual enactment zen definition zen and cultural preservation may 23 i am an outsider to the tibetan buddhist world but from where i stand it appears that tibetan buddhism in its various forms is doing quite well in the us i have met a few teachers and quite a few students and even visited a few groups and almost across the board i would say there is a seriousness about practice and a reverence for the teachings that goes very deep it s an impressive world there are multiple large and small centers offering monastic style practice and intensive retreat opportunities in many cases groups chant teachings in tibetan in some they offer language classes so that students might better understand what they re reading of course there have been reformers like chogyam trungpa who worked to find an authentically western expression of the tradition also in many cases teachers have chosen to downplay traditional preliminary practices for western students letting them receive empowerments early on that might in tibet have had a lot more prerequisites i do not doubt that the question of how closely to adhere to the traditional practice and its cultural context is an active and pressing one almost everywhere i would be surprised to hear otherwise but i sense again speaking very generally that american vajrayana students do not feel that the way buddhism was practiced in tibet was a sad hollow shell of true buddhism they do not feel a sense of obligation to throw away all those aspects of the tradition that don t easily fit into american culture they don t see their tradition as being broken they don t see themselves as the ones who will fix it the students i have met hold their teachers and other teachers of similar backgrounds in the highest regard they seem to want to do it the way their teachers did it and if not that they want to at least understand what it is that their teachers passed through to be who they are it seems from the outside like a very respectful world in contrast i ve noticed especially recently that one of the defining characteristics of zen culture is a tendency to speak negatively about zen it s built in it s fashionable i cannot count how many conversations i ve heard in japan in which priests lament the state of the tradition of the priesthood of the monasteries someone i know once asked her teacher a very high ranking and respected japanese monk in his own right a teacher of teachers are there any zen masters in japan he thought about it and replied no i guess not well maybe that guy in no well no maybe not right now older monks love to talk about how the young monks just don t get it and the young monks can see that a lot of the old monks seem to be all talk and no action everyone knows that the monastic standards have gone lax again there are exceptions but one doesn t have to look far to find an authorized training monastery that is a monastery in name only where even zazen practice is maintained at only the most basic basic level once a day maybe if you re new to zen this may all sound a bit shocking or just sad but it goes way way back 800 years ago dōgen the founder of the soto school in japan spent a good amount of ink complaining about how buddhism has gone down the drain how the people in authority have no idea what they re talking about of course dōgen believed that the teachings he had received from his teacher at least were authentic he just felt that he was more or less alone in what he was carrying some of these complaints about japanese zen are absolutely real i am deeply pessimistic about the trends i see here but some of this way of talking is also cultural in a country where self deprecation is as fundamental as gravity one shouldn t be surprised that so few people are prepared to say this is the real deal i suspect that in his time a lot of dōgen s enemies despised him not for what he was teaching but for the unapologetic confidence with which he taught it in the west we see this too but it s a little different in japan priests commiserate about the decay of zen in japan in the west priests commiserate about the decay of zen in japa...
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