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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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g 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 japan many of the teachers who came to the west from japan were fed up with the state of things in their home country both within the tradition itself and within the bureaucracy heavy institutions being built up around it they personally knew great teachers but they could see that there were few in line to replace them so when they made their way across the ocean they told students that they had the opportunity in the land of opportunity to establish something pure something authentic there was even talk of how this newly established pure practice might turn around and re inspire buddhism in japan this was big thinking and for the record i love that they held such huge aspirations as with dōgen we can t separate out that confidence and that sincerity from what they actually accomplished which is remarkable but the downside is that many people heard this talk and just took their teachers word for it that buddhism in japan had gone down the drain or that it wasn t relevant anymore so western practitioners were handed and embraced the rather lofty challenge of fixing zen buddhism either because it was fundamentally broken or because it was too burdened by asian cultural baggage to be of any use in the west i suspect that a major reason that vajrayana practitioners embrace the tibetan ness of tibetan buddhism is that there is a sense of protection a desire to preserve not just the buddhist tradition of that culture but also the culture itself it also helps that tibetan culture as a whole seems to be closely intertwined with buddhism going so far as to establish a role like that of the dalai lama that wields not just spiritual but also political authority preserving tibetan buddhism is a way of supporting and preserving a displaced culture and that s appealing zen in the west doesn t tap into that impulse to preserve after all japanese culture is doing just fine on its own the feeling for years has been that true zen has been buried under japanese cultural baggage and we need to free it it usually being zazen there are dozens of teachers in the us who take it as a badge of honor that they don t wear robes or that they don t do the ceremonies or that they don t put on airs sitting on the high seat they re free from all that japanese stuff and the same attitudes are common among those who frequent zen centers i knew one man in alaska who was genuinely concerned that the ceremonies we performed were designed to make him feel less than his japanese counterparts as part of an agenda to suggest that asians are innately more spiritual i suspect that his concerns which he was able to describe very clearly are actually common in western zen even if they are not always so plainly articulated i want to propose however that american zen like american vajrayana can take refuge in this culture preserving mind it s available and in our evolution i think it s important but i also want to clarify that the culture to be preserved is not japanese culture it s zen culture the fact is that even japanese people as a whole know very little about zen culture non japanese often feel so overwhelmingly out of place in a japanese monastery that they cannot see that japanese people too are completely out of their element they don t know what to do they don t know how to stand how to sit how to behave it s a new world for them of course much of zen culture in japan is informed by japanese norms for example i would say that one aspect of what i m calling zen culture is a refined formality in monasteries people avoid casual speech dōgen went so far as to insist that monks only refer to vegetables using honorifics some of the shape that formality takes in japan is naturally very japanese there is a sense from samurai movies and centuries old literature about how one addresses those in power about how to speak and sit and gesture in a very formal way and some of that certainly enters the monastery but monastery formality is its own thing likewise the insistence on very specific physicality hold your hands like this stand with your feet like so and on and on has some parallels in other aspects of japanese culture tea ceremony is an obvious example but i have never seen a version as complete as what one finds in a temple each individual accepts responsibility for participating in and t...
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