It's good to know something of Mahayana Buddhists' worldview. Turns out their afterlife is far more phantasmagoric than that of its monotheistic countIt's good to know something of Mahayana Buddhists' worldview. Turns out their afterlife is far more phantasmagoric than that of its monotheistic counterparts. Like the latter's soul though, the Mahayana Buddhists believe in a form of post-death consciousness called mind. The Tibetan Book of the Dead has been available to me for years, but I've never made sense of it. As usual, author Chödrön distills the complexity down to a few cogent chapters. That's a gift I prize. I think Chödrön's best text for those new to Buddhism is Start Where You Are. Let me also suggest Suzuki Roshi's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind....more
I’ve just read 400 pages about a Buddhist monk? The subject matter seems like a snoozer, yet I was riveted. I had read two of Suzuki’s dharma books, wI’ve just read 400 pages about a Buddhist monk? The subject matter seems like a snoozer, yet I was riveted. I had read two of Suzuki’s dharma books, which reveal something of his kind personality, but this biography which surveys his long training as a monk in Japan and his subsequent removal with his wife and son to America is a pleasure and a heartbreak.
American Zen has the advantage of not being weighed down by 15 centuries of tradition such as Suzuki Shunryu Suzuki went through in pre-WW2 Japan. His father was a Zen master, so Shunryu grew out of that culture. Perhaps that was the background he needed to emerge from enormous spiritual and personal challenges so unruffled and clearheaded. In the 1930s the Japanese state licensed Suzuki to teach ethics. Under this mantle of protection he wrote pieces during wartime on such questions as “What are the root causes of peace?” Such abstract discussions permitted him to operate free of the police.
In the same way, more than twenty years later, when visited by the J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI—for Suzuki was a figure in San Francisco’s so called “countercultural” circles by then; he’d waved to a jubilant crowd from the stage of a Grateful Dead concert, a “zenefit” supporting the acquisition of land on which the Tassajara monastery would rise—he out maneuvered the agents by telling them, “Oh yes, I have a son in Vietnam. He’s a barber and a mechanic in the U.S. Army. He enlisted. My wife is worried about him, but I think he needed to get out and do something.” He then showed them a letter from the soldier son.
If one knows Suzuki’s books, especially his first, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, one sees how his wartime behavior is completely in accordance with his pacifism, his belief in the Buddhist precepts, and the enlightened thought of the 13th century founder of the Soto school, Dogen, who wrote the key Soto Zen text, Shobogenzo.
I don’t believe much here is hagiography here. Certainly some sanitizing has occurred in the writing. That’s in the nature of texts; they distort. But the author’s approach is warts and all. Suzuki, for example, was for much of his life given to fits of temper and he was terribly absentminded. Chadwick had even worried about the possibility of authorial distortion early on when considering whether or not to write the book.
Suzuki had a sizable family. While still in Japan, he was very much the gruff Japanese patriarch. Suzuki was rough with his children in a manner reminiscent of his father, and his taciturn first master, So-on. When his second wife was brutally killed by a mentally disturbed monk, he blamed himself. The scene in which he apologizes to his children, and asks that they hate him, instead of the assailant, is profoundly moving.
But Suzuki grew restive in Japan, where Zen has long been in decline, in part because the temple system allows fathers to pass possession of temples down to theirs sons, who may have little or no interest in Zen. Suzuki decided to go to America in his mid-fifties, which constituted the renewal of a very young man’s dream. He was shocked by the filthy state of Sokoji when he arrived in San Francisco. He began to clean. Slowly he attracted disciples. He reinstated zazen as the rightful keystone of the zendo. But his elderly Japanese-American congregation, which had a dated ancestor-worship view of Zen, were increasingly at odds with the hippie newcomers, whom Suzuki was grooming as disciples, and they rudely fired him. In the end it was a blessing. For he carried on his teaching of Zen in other digs, the San Francisco Zen Center, and its satellite, Zen Mountain Monastery in Tassajara, California. Green Gulch Farm was acquired posthumously.
(It was at SFZC that Chris, the young son of Robert M. Pirsig, was staying when he was brutally murdered in the Haight district. If you’ve read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance you may know this sad tale, which happened after the book’s initial publication in 1974, and which Pirsig wrote about in an anniversary edition Afterword.)
For those who have read Suzuki’s books— I have read two of the three—there’s the added attraction here that author Chadwick went through some 300 hours of Suzuki’s dharma lectures (teisho) and pulled many quotes that he uses interstitially throughout the book, virtually new material that’s never seen publication. It’s reassuring hearing Suzuki’s voice again saying new and unknown things. That alone, I think, is worth the price of the book. But there’s so much more.
The second half of the biography is really the story of the sangha that grew around him in San Francisco. He died of cancer in 1969. He is said to have been the first Soto Zen master to have come from Japan to teach in America and start a monastery, which is Tassajara. His dharma heirs have ensured that the institution he started has endured....more
In his essays on Synchronicity C.G. Jung writes of the “acausal connecting principal” or what we in the West refer to as chance. Jung believed in evenIn his essays on Synchronicity C.G. Jung writes of the “acausal connecting principal” or what we in the West refer to as chance. Jung believed in events not connected causally, and thus unprovable in an empirical sense, but connected by the meaning we derive from them. Buddhism is the only nontheistic discipline I know of which allows for such a possibility.
Earlier I was drawn to books by Pema Chödrön. Perhaps because the discipline for the form of meditation she espoused was rather loosely structured, or perhaps because I am lazy, I drifted away from it. By the way, her astonishing Start Where You Are, is well worth multiple rereadings. Now I’m looking into Zen, which I’ve always put off doing because I thought it would be prohibitively demanding.
There is a disparity in what is considered effective practice by the two main schools of Zen, Soto and Rinzai. This book is largely a Rinzai and Soto cocktail. Some Rinzai methods for achieving kensho, are considered by Sotoians and others as harsh, perhaps even traumatizing. The Soto school, by contrast—the Soto master best known to me is Shunryu Suzuki—believes that kensho is not something that has to be sought. The Soto school’s view is that from the moment you assume the zazen posture, which is physically demanding but doable, you are enlightened. There is no need to strive. Just ensure effective zazen is a lifelong practice.
This is what threw me at the start of this book. For much of the language used in Kapleau’s introduction seemed at loggerheads with principles of Soto Zen I’d learned from Suzuki-roshi’s books. (See his Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, considered a classic.) For example, there is language in the Introduction which connotes grasping, seeking attainment, and pride in one’s spiritual elevation, but it is never acknowledged as such in the text. It is a kind of cognitive dissonance that runs through the book.
Fortunately, this contradiction abates in the early section on practical advice from Yasutani-roshi, introducer Kapleau’s master, who relays in 12 short chapters much about the current practice of Zen. The stages are laid out for those starting zazen. I used them to start my practice. These early practical chapters I will undoubtedly have to re-read soon, so helpful are they, but dense with information.
The section “Encounter With Ten Westerners,” details the dokusan between Yasutani-roshi and a number of his students, mostly American beginners, held in Hokkaido c. 1960. Author Kapleau was the interpreter who subsequently gained permission to turn these one-on-one dharma tutorials into transcripts. I wrote in my review of Peter Matthiessen’s Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals that not before reading that wild book had I come across commentaries by Zen students in the midst of training. Well, I’ve just discovered many more, and like the Matthiessen journals they are enormously insightful.
Some of the passages, as when Yasutani-roshi is encouraging a despairing young woman, are deeply moving. Moreover, his patience in the face of some very frivolous questions is downright Job-ian. When he says: “In the profoundest sense, we can know nothing.” Well, that resounded with me; for I am one who reads and reads and constantly wishes to know. It’s how I’ve survived. But the Roshi’s statement, though almost ungraspable is at the same time liberating. It made my existential protoplasm go all aquiver.
In “Bassui’ Dharma Talk and Lectures” there is reference to hell, and the Three Evil Paths, presumably negotiated in the bardo, should one end up there having not achieved enlightenment in this life. This is something Pema Chödrön’s books never describe. In fact, all supernatural matters have been stripped from that particular school of Buddhism, Shambala, which is a secular practice for achieving enlightened society based on the teachings of Chögyam Trungpa. Neither are hells ever mentioned in the dharma talks of Suzuki-roshi, a Soto master.
I don’t understand sesshin as it’s described here with its atmosphere of striving, not to mention pummelings with the kyosaku. Everyone is sitting there huffing and puffing and straining their concentration. It seems to me like a self-imposed ordeal. I just don’t see how one can be willfully bent on kensho and at the same time be non-seeking with regard to attainment. As I’ve said, this is the paradox which runs through this entire book. Maybe it is its own koan.
I skipped the section “Enlightenment Letters” for now and moved on to the supplemental section, “Dogen on ‘Being Time’”, which is an except from that master’s Shobogenzo. The book closes with a handy Q&A on the principles and practice of zazen—re postures, pain, breathing, disposition of one’s gaze, etc.—and an afterword by the present abbot of Rochester New York’s Zen community on the development of Zen in the West. Though I have questions about some of the content here, overall I think it’s essential reading for those seeking to practice zazen, and may be especially helpful to those seeking an introduction to koan study.
I usually read translations of Buddhist sutras or the lessons of this or that great teacher: Pema Chödrön, John Daido Lorri, Shunryu Suzuki et al. ThiI usually read translations of Buddhist sutras or the lessons of this or that great teacher: Pema Chödrön, John Daido Lorri, Shunryu Suzuki et al. This is the first book I’ve read by a student of Zen Buddhism. It’s about how that student came to adopt his new discipline and describes some of his growing pains on the Way. It’s unbelievably emotional in the early going as Matthiessen tells the detailed story of the death of his wife, Deborah Love, who brought him into the Zen fold in the early 1970s.
There is a scandal of some kind at Dai Bosatsu on Beecher Lake in upstate New York where the Rinzai school of Zen has built its new temple. It’s not clear but there has been some improper “conduct” (probably untoward advances to one or more of the female students) by one of the roshis. Matthiessen finds, sadly, after years of regular practice of zazen there, that he must move on and disconnect from his problematic teacher. During 1973 he turns his attention to his Zen diaries on a trip to Nepal. This was at the time he was doing research for The Snow Leopard. In fact two chapters from that book are reprinted here. He writes about his practice and I do not think I have ever read a more moving account of simple happiness. Of course, that is not his goal; he knows not to expect attainment but at the same time simply to practice zazen resolutely. “Expect nothing,” one teacher tells him. As he walks through the Himalayan landscape he discusses some of the teachings engaging him and the astonishing flora and fauna: accipitrine hawks and the great Lammergeier with its “nine foot blade sweeping down out of the north.”
Matthiessen goes to great lengths to tell the story, not only of his own spiritual awakening, but to detail the history of the Rinzai and Soto schools of Zen he is studying. Some classic dharma is related. We follow him to the historic Zen sites in Japan, which he visits in 1973 and 1982. It’s kind of a Buddhist monk’s Stations of the Cross, for by 1982 Matthiessen is a Soto monk. Starting at Kamakura, where sits the famous bronze Buddha of the Boundless Light, cast in 1252, he visits the Rinzai head monastery, the Engaku-ji, a huge compound of temples built into the evergreens in a ravine on a high hill north of the town.
Here at Engaku, one moonlit night, the nun Chiyono, hauling water, attained enlightenment when her wood bucket collapsed and water splashed onto the ground. In gratitude, she wrote the poem: In this way and that I tried to save the old pail / Since the bamboo strip was weakening, about to break / Until at last the bottom fell out. / No more water in the pail! / No more moon in the water!(p. 143)
Then it’s on to Mishima under Mount Fuji, and Ryutaku temple in the foothills, where he and his fellow monks meet after zazen with Soen-roshi, Matthiessen’s former teacher, for green tea, sake and lemon wine, and to blow bamboo whistles and triton horns. Soen-roshi then sends them off to Nara and Kyoto with his kind monk Ho-San. As Nara draws near, Matthiessen sees the jutting roofs of Horyu-ji, with its great outlying temples that came into existence about 600 CE, about the same time the Mahayana teachings arrived from China. Horyu-ji is the first seat of Japanese Buddhism, a seminary of the Hossu sect. Here we learn the particulars about how Zen came to primitive Japan, and how it had to placate the Shinto Sun Goddess at Ise before its advocates could build their big Buddha.
It is when Matthiessen goes to Kyoto that a brief overview of the vicissitudes of the shogunate and Buddhism generally is given. Key texts are quoted. The enormous violence of the period and the corruption of Buddhism disheartens the reader. The reformer was a Tendai priest called Eisai. Eisai’s reforms were backed by the second Minamoto shogun and under his aegis the construction of Kennin Temple in Kyoto was begun. This brings us up to the 12th century. It wasn’t until I got to this part of the book that I realized that the writing of it may for Matthiessen have been a way of teaching himself the complicated lineages, history and topography of Zen. It’s quite a story.
The city of Kyoto—which was spared from bombing during World War II—is one of the most precious in the world. When I came here as a Rinzai student in June 1973, I stayed at a student boarding house near high-peaked, dark Daitoku-ji, perhaps the mightiest in aspect of all Zen temples in Japan. Wandering the city day after day, I paid my respects at Myoshin-ji (the mother temple of Ryutaku-ji, with its Taizo-in temple rock garden and waterfall, its magnificent bird screen portraits of geese and falcons) and Tofuku-ji (which became the seat of Rinzai Zen a few years after Eisai’s death, and remains the largest Rinzai monastery in Japan.) One morning I had the marvelous luck to find myself alone for fifteen minutes on the wood platform that overlooks the austere, disturbing stone garden at Ryoan-ji, where the old earth wall is as beautiful as the composition of the large stones.... Every day for ten years, it is said, one may see a different temple without exhausting the temples of Kyoto. (p. 159)
And that’s not counting the temples of nearby Nara. However, Buddhism in Japan is now in decline. It died out in China during the reign of Tang Emperor Wuzong—who in 845 CE ordered the irreparable destruction of 4,600 Buddhist monasteries and 40,000 temples—so now it has for many years been in retreat in Japan, though from more benign causes. The first signs of decline can be traced to the 16th century. It is the state that today maintains the massive monasteries as a cultural legacy, for there are few monks, and those who do exist are largely in the business of observing final rites at funerals. Seventy million Japanese still consider themselves Buddhists, according the Pew Research Center, and no doubt many practitioners of Zen remain, but most are laymen and secular. The Japanese tend to visit their rich cultural legacy twice a year, in spring for the cherry blossoms, and to view the fall foliage. These are now architectural and historical sites, largely devoid of religious programming.
An exception is Eihei-ji in Fukui near the Nine-Headed Dragon River of the title; this is in the mountainous northern snow country so memorably written about by Nobel laureate Kawabata. Here Matthiessen is on the ancient trail of the genius of Soto Zen, the author of the Shobogenzo, Dōgen. There were not only novice monks training at Eihei-ji at the time of Matthiessen’s visit, but zazen was offered, as well as a special 3:00 am mountainside zazen at a spot Dōgen (d. 1253) preferred. Another exception is Hosshin-ji near the town of Obama on the northwest coast, southwest of Eihei-ji. It is here, Matthiessen writes, that “the Soto and Rinzai traditions have been merged in a fresh new manifestation of the new Dharma.” It is here that the Dōgen’s vision of shikantaza is being reanimated with the insights provided by new translations of Shobogenzo—English title, Treasury of the True Dharma Eye—into modern Japanese....more
This book has been indispensable to me as I have sought to teach myself zazen. I don’t have a teacher, so the intense clinics in shikantaza contained This book has been indispensable to me as I have sought to teach myself zazen. I don’t have a teacher, so the intense clinics in shikantaza contained herein have been a godsend. It’s a collection of dharma lectures—teisho—by some two or three dozen Zen masters, some ancient, most Americans alive today. I have found the book more helpful to me than the koan school of enlightenment (Rinzai) which is described in Philip Kapleau’s The Three Pillars of Zen, which is no doubt optimal for some persons. The school represented in The Art of Just Sitting is Soto. This Soto form seems to be entirely without mention of the dreaded kyosaku, or any of Buddhism’s multifarious hells. In fact, all supernatural aspects seem to have been stripped away. The Soto school says that the moment you assume the zazen posture, you have entered a state of enlightenment. No additional striving or aspiration is necessary. You are enlightened simply by virtue of your sincere intent to practice. The teisho here are rich, literary productions in themselves, as well as vital instruction. They must represent some two or more centuries of collective Zen experience. Re-reading them soon will be necessary....more
I remember trying to read a volume of sutras which were the official translations from the Pali. It was so disappointing. Repetitive and abstruce, uttI remember trying to read a volume of sutras which were the official translations from the Pali. It was so disappointing. Repetitive and abstruce, utterly unreadable in fact. I will admit that this was in part my fault. I didn't know the literature as well then. My knowledge is still virtually schematic, but I've come across a few good bibliographies in Armstrong and elsewhere that have led me to the present volume. It is a thoughtful, semi-coherent translation of two sutras from the Sanskrit: The Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra. The commentary is on target. (Except for the 10 pages or so of the Diamond Sutra when Conze offers no commentary at all, so impenetrable is the original text; this is just one way in which Conze seems careful to avoid discursive redoubts where there might be needless wheel spinning.) In other words, the book is well edited. My only word of caution would be to prepare yourself for the full out use of paradox. For a Westerner paradox can be frustrating. The text does ultimately make sense, but you may need to undergo multiple patient readings before it yields fully its charms. The process of reading such books, I have found, is like osmosis. One must immerse oneself in the text, and slowly the understanding of no-understanding comes about. But this book is mostly about how classical Buddhism was taught for many hundreds of years. For more direct access to the core of a streamlined form of American Buddhism that I have found transformative, I strongly recommend Pema Chödrön's books, especially Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living, The Places that Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times and When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times....more
This book is a concise description of the historical development of Buddhism. The key word "essence" is correct. Dr Conze distills much into this swifThis book is a concise description of the historical development of Buddhism. The key word "essence" is correct. Dr Conze distills much into this swift, readable account. The form of American Buddhism I study is completely stripped of all supernatural trappings. It is essentially mind training, and as such has much in common with classical Stoic philosophy. Yet I have often wondered what happened to all the gods and hells of ancient Buddhism. Well, here they are. I highly recommend this as an adjunct to popular books on Buddhist practice by, say, Pema Chödrön or Thich Nhat Hanh. Little is known about very early Buddhism because, though it flourished on the Gangetic Plain, there was a reluctance to commit the dharma to writing. This, astonishingly to the 21st century reader, because it was believed that writing would diminish the memory skills of the monks, who, would just rely on writings as opposed to engaging in a more lively practice of Buddhism. The Pali texts were not created until about 400 years after the death of Buddha. Particularly interesting is the story of what is known about the split of Buddhism into the separate camps of the Hinayana and Mahayana. . . . And of the Mahayana how and why it was necessary to create a god-filled realm for those who could only approach the religion on the basis of faith as opposed to wisdom. Conze discusses the usefulness of mythos and how it was possible for the Mahayana to use this device for purposes of ensuring the salvation of those unable to pursue the more rigorous discipline of the monks. Thus the faith approach to nirvana and the wisdom approach, both of which bring the adherent the same ultimate enlightenment. Tantra is also explained. This was the most difficult section for me, perhaps because it seems in such opposition to the Buddhism that has been so helpful to me. Highly recommended....more
This book is balm. My second reading. It contains its own instructions for reading too. If some metaphor or anecdote seems too dense, just let it passThis book is balm. My second reading. It contains its own instructions for reading too. If some metaphor or anecdote seems too dense, just let it pass. There is no need to read the text as closely as I just have; that’s me. Suzuki-roshi explains it all. Toward the end it gets a little bit repetitious; that’s because these are in fact transcripts—elegantly edited—of talks given at Tassajarra Zen Mountain Monastery, Los Altos, California in 1969 or so. Really worthwhile if you seek big Mind....more
Loading...
