What is"Zen" anyway?

And, is Zen the same thing as zen?  Ah, I won't touch the second question here - I'll use both interchangeably.   As for the first question, I suppose you could go to Wikipedia or Google or something and get a variety of answers.   But I thought on this blog it might be a good idea to explore the question here.

There's a blog - The Worst Horse - that devotes quite a few bits of storage to the notion of finding examples where Buddhist terms and imagery, including "Dharma," "Zen" (or is it zen?),  Buddhas, etc. are used for commercial gain or pop culture. (His latest entry on electric butter lamps, though, is an amusing misfire: There's a whole host of Chinese and Vietnamese (and probably other ethnic groups') temples that actually use electric lighting as "candles" and other lighting on the altar.) 

There's also - I found this out this week - a foundation called "Urban Zen" which is apparently associated with charitable activities, and some forms of meditation and yoga. 

Is that Zen?

As a guy who's been doing this for a few years, I'll quote from a link that is apparently writing  from the (now scandal-retired) Eido Shimano Roshi:

A special transmission outside the scriptures;
No dependence on words and letters;
Direct pointing to the mind of man;
Seeing into one's nature and attaining Buddhahood.
Bodhidharma

The special transmission of Zen is the realization of the Buddha's enlightenment itself, in one's own life, in one's own time. This experience has been realized by Zen students and confirmed by their teachers for over 2500 years.

Central and indispensable to Zen is daily Zazen practice. It is this practice that is the "direct pointing to the mind of man." Zazen melts away the mind-forged distances that separate man from himself; leads one beyond himself as knower, to himself as known. In Zazen, there is no reality outside what exists here and now. Each moment, each act is inherently Buddha-nature. While sorrow and joy, anxiety and imperturbability cannot be avoided, by not clinging to them we find ourselves free of them, no longer pulled this way and that. With this self-mastery comes composure and tranquility of mind, but these are by-products of Zazen rather than its goals.

Zazen is a Japanese term consisting of two characters: za, "to sit (cross-legged)," and zen, from the Sanscrit dhyana, meaning at once concentration, dynamic stillness, and contemplation. The means toward the realization of one's original nature as well as the realization itself, Zazen is both something one does - sitting cross-legged, with proper posture and correct breathing - and something one essentially is. To emphasize one aspect at the expense of the other is to misunderstand this subtle and profound practice.

It's kind of interesting to me that Shimano (presumably) phrased it this way, especially since folks like Hakuin, Suzuki Shosan and others (I'm Rinzai, mostly) emphasized that the practice should take place in the midst of activity as well as on the zafu.

And in that activity - whatever the activity - if "done right" there is practice.  Though I would profer that being a corporate raider and causing suffering, or being a mass murderer or (insert any other time of person who does a heinous act) and such can't be practicing when they're being greedy, hateful or ignorant.

This "special transmission outside the scriptures" of which Bodhidharma (presumably) wrote is the transmission of this activity - in the same way that  詠春 (Wing Chun) or 書道 (shodou - Asian calligraphy) or yoga or playing the violin or learning to live peacefully with people who grate on your nerves is transmitted via experience outside of writing and words.  And this "direct pointing  to the mind of man" is the mind that just does these things, and does them for the benefit of all beings.

I've no idea whether or not the realization of the mission of the  Urban Zen Foundation really is that kind of Zen or not.  But I do know practice is bigger than that.  And that practice is realized by the cultivation of skill required to actually help all beings.  Their heart seems to be in the right place (that's a lousy phrase, but you get my drift), but I must admit that my reaction on seeing some of their stuff is "Nice charity work...some New Age oddness...but is this trivializing Zen practice?"

I could be wrong.

I'm not really in Donna Karan (benefactor of the foundation)'s target demographic (must avoid linking to a Bill Hicks video on marketers...oops too late).  As an engineer who's now in his 50s, I've developed an esthetic about clothes that kind of excludes that sort of thing, without getting into details.  OK, I'll put in one detail: clothes should fit, be easily maintained and last nearly forever.  They should be kind of a cross between whatever the heck the Shakers would produce if they were around to make clothes in these times and if you had your own tailor.  Oh, yeah, and they shouldn't look outrageously "different" in terms of matching one's social demographic.

Sorry for the digression.

I don't know if the kind of Zen done by "Urban Zen" is or is not the kind of Zen I aspire to incorporate into everything I do; neither do I know what kind of Zen or practice anybody else on the internet does/is or does/is not do/is.  Eventually I suppose it all points back to my practice - what kind of Zen am I practicing?

A lot of people will tell you a lot of things about a lot of topics on this here internet.  Kick the tires; do your homework...especially on yourself.

If some is good, more must be better!

I'm sure others will say something about what the NY Times pronounces on yoga, but isn't the moral of the story sort of obvious?

Having said that, as a result of reading that article I'm inclined to sit a bit in though the 正座 position (vajrasana-like, but without twisted knees), though it might offend certain people.

Non-violence, 武道, laughter, and hypocrisy

Once again, a post on Nathan's blog and my recent experience with Wing Chun has provided grist for the blog.  That post points to this post at the "Interdependence project" by one J. Brown.  I quote:

I have only been in one fight. It was in the third grade. I don’t recall what the impetus was but it ended up in a war of words between me and another boy on the basketball court. I remember deciding to hit him but when I went to strike my arm went slack. It was as if my body overrode my minds directive and I was incapable of trying to harm him.

The other boy did not have the same issue and I was quickly pinned and squirming to be free. The only black girl in our class, Latisha, came to my aid and pushed him off of me before he got any punches in. We were friends and no one messed with Latisha.

I can trace my inclination for yoga back to that day. I learned something important about myself. I am not naturally inclined towards violence. Even as a boy, I recognized that this was not true of everyone. As an adult, it makes sense that I embrace a life philosophy that puts a premium on nonviolence.

 Well, my history was different. My siblings and I were subject to bullying as a young kids, and I don't know about J. Brown's history otherwise, but the point where a kid fights back is where the bullying generally stops. Like J. Brown, I too don't think of violence as the first  thing when in an altercation, and in the intervening years between the time I fought back against a bully and now I have learned very much about the proper applicatoin of power.

Power, authority, and responsibility are a three-legged stool of a metaphorical sort; you can't have any two legitimately  without the third, and to abjure any one of them, as Rollo May pointed out, is inherently unhealthy for people.  Understanding this and embracing it is an important key to healthy relationships, organizations, and societies.

And at some point the proper application of power may need to be the application of violence to eliminate the possibility of greater harm. That is the principle of budō (武道), and why for a very long time I've understood that there was an undercurrent of unrecognized hypocrisy or at least ignorance in the dogmatic pacifist.  I too was a dogmatic pacifist once, one who thought he was "unlucky" to have been bullied as a young kid, perhaps as a means of rationalizing or forgetting the fact that real abuse had been done to me.

Somewhere along the line I realized that there were entire strains of human experience unknown to me in the manner that Henry Miller noted that where he came from,  Brooklyn, the notion of temperate climates was unknown.  Long Island, my home region, borders Queens which borders Brooklyn.  The notion that you can walk down any street, and firearms notwithstanding, nobody will mess with you and you have no need to mess with them is a very temperate climate indeed.

J. Brown, and Nathan later in his post  get to the point that there is aspects of harm to one's self that arise from a yoga practice from time to time.  I had to really chuckle at this bit from Brown:

I remember a particular occasion when I was teaching one of my trademark power vinyasa classes. I was barking out my well prepared sequence and, instead of my usual attention to everyone’s alignment, I happened to be noticing the facial expressions of the people in my class.

They looked miserable. They were filled with struggle and strain, just doing their best to get through and not enjoying themselves much in the process. There was a distinct lack of joy.

Afterwards, several students came up to thank me and tell me how great the class was. It made me feel uncomfortable. Walking home, I kept thinking: “What am I doing?”

 One of the most temperate aspects of the martial arts training I've been receiving is just how very very different it is from the "regimented" types of martial arts practice (forms, uniforms, etc.)  that's so common in other schools.  But the thing that really hooked me on this way was not just that (though at 54, with my own Zen teacher, and with the forms of Zen, I don't need more excuses for forms).  It was the attitude of teacher and participants.

There was frequent from-the-belly laughter. There's laughter because the old sifu can take somebody twice his size and three times his weight and throw him across the room, everyone knows it, the guy is as gentle as a kitten, but in the course of showing one how and why a particular move should be done exactly a certain way there's this weird mechanical magic that is just astounding.  There's laughter because we're so much younger than he, and we're so incompetent at this (and I am among the most incompetent).  And there's laughter because we incompetents occasionally see that we've had this power all along; we just didn't know how to use it, and when we get a glimpse of it, a glimpse of being able to practice this magic, it's knee-slapping funny because it makes a mockery of all the preconceptions we've had about ourselves all our lives, at least those regarding how we were physically present in the world.

In short, I have fun doing this. And I don't know about yoga, but I do know that the only way to get better at what I'm doing is practicing, but practicing without expecting perfection in each attempt, just attempting an iota of improvement.   I feel sorry for those Marine boot-camp yoga and martial arts ways.  They have too much extra baggage, I think.  But I do also think embedded into their harm situation may be a condition of a distorted notion of power, authority and responsibility.

I don't know, maybe I'm lucky; (see "unlucky" above); I think I am to have at least once in my life, found a teacher who can do this, and fellow students who are patient with my incompetence.

Update:
It's also interesting to read Brad Warner's piece on juggling and Ken Wilber and prowess on the "Suicide Girls" site (which I got from his regular blog).  I share his displeasure towards someone "like Ken Wilber who does tricks — ones that nobody can ever even verify he’s accomplished, by the way — [and makes]  tons more money than that street juggler down on Venice Beach who does something far cooler."  But I would part ways a bit with Warner based on what my Zen teacher's my the Wing Chun teacher's attitude towards the student, and heck, any good teacher (which, I think Warner may think he is). That is, the whole point of Rinzai teaching practice - and Wing Chun teaching, (that is, what the teachers do in teaching) as I've experienced it is, physical and mental disabilities notwithstanding in the latter case, you can do it too!  That's why it's often very funny - because I never really thought it might be possible  to heave a big linebacker across a room with my hand. But today I realize it might not entirely be out of the question someday, given the right confluence of circumstances. And that's funny.

The juggler and Ken Wilber, and the yoga marine drill sergeant  - imply what they do is way, way beyond your skill.

But it isn't.  It's just likely that you never studied juggling, Wing Chun, or fancy electronic brain tricks.

You know, it's like magicians' magic. You don't have to kill yourself or make tons of money to do something, but you can have fun, become more mindful, and more psychologically whole.  And you can laugh, too.

Stirring a bit of life back into this blog...a summary....

                                                       Buddha from Longmen Grottos, Henan Province

It's not for lack of material; largely it's been for lack of time. As my family is in China for the summer, I've had less time for blogging than usual, especially given the fact that I started taking Wing Chun from a teacher some 25 or so miles from where I live. And today I have to go to Greece - I'm looking forward to the weather (it's been a rather cold summer here in the Pacific NW). But I get this feeling I'm going to be witnessing something close to the collapse of a government/social disorder/etc. But for want of a few blog posts here and there, here's a few points for those who might still follow this blog from time to time: 

• Barbara's recent posts on Tibet - especially her latest -  are remarkably free of perspective at how disingenuous the Tibetan exile organization sounds to the Chinese. I mean really.
• I had been meaning to put a comment on her site that she might be being indirectly subsidized by the Chinese government; China Daily accepts branded content from the NY Times every now and then, and About.com is owned by the NY Times. 
• Having actually, really, taken a martial arts class from a teacher in one of the world's most renowned lineages of the art (hence the 25 mile drive each way twice/week), I think I can begin to write about martial arts and Zen Buddhism.  And the martial arts themselves.  But instead I should be practicing both Zen and Wing Chun.  
• One post would be how a martial arts practice informs a Zen practice from  a purely physical point of view.  
• One post would be - I have done yoga  as part of my pre-zazen practice, and I have taken a few classes in other martial arts, but really practicing a martial art such as Wing Chun (and there are others, I'm sure) results in a deep re-assessment of one's self that yoga, I'm afraid, can't really provide.  It's true.
• I could write 3 or 4 posts on Wing Chun itself. It is a system that whoever invented  it - some say Ng Mui - whoever invented it was a smack down absolute freakin' genius.
• One thing that is amazing about it is how little you need to learn to actually begin to replicate what you see in the movies.  Ah, but to perfect those moves takes a hell of a lot of practice, because...
• Another thing that is amazing about it is how profoundly counter-intuitive aspects of it are, relative to some arts such as Tae Kwon Do and various schools of karate.
• Regarding martial arts - as in Zen - I'd say the specific school is nowhere near as important as finding a good teacher.
• And yet another post would be a re-assessment of the "yoga & zen" thing.
• I'm also meaning to post on "Buddhism and the Internet of Things," mostly because as a guy who actually researches the "Internet of things" and studies Buddhism the "topic" comes across to me as "Buddhism and Consumer Product  R&D," or something like that - it's an almost absurd juxtaposition of terms.
• I'd also been meaning to post on the recent economy of late.
• And how to get back into practice.

That's all for now.  That should stir up some stuff...

Sitting the full lotus

I have kind of a confession to make: 99.99% of my sitting over the years, I have been doing it in either 1/2 lotus, 1/4 lotus (the best I could manage to do kekkafuza  (結跏趺坐)or seiza (正座).  Recently, though, because of my swimming exercise and somewhat more healthy diet, I have been able to do 結跏趺坐 as full lotus.  For the longest time I could not do it, and then one day I tried it, and I could do it.  Amazing are the side effects of losing weight and being in shape.

And let me tell you: it makes a difference.

In addition, it seems to be remedying somewhat a bit of lower pain I'd had in my back.

Somebody on this Brad Warner post suggested this Tai Chi exercise might help.  Maybe it will; it is quite a bit like swimming.

If you do 座禅 you should try to get your body slowly over time to be able to sit in this position, if at all possible.

Yoga poses such as Warner recommends here might help, too.

I think that an important aspect of Right Livelihood, whether you call it a "Gate of Zen" or not, is being in shape.  You can sit full lotus.  You can move furniture and over-packed luggage that previously required assistance.  You can sleep at night. It seems to help with anger management.

Good for the Hindu American Foundation!

I see that the Hindu American Foundation is leading a campaign called "Take Back Yoga."

The campaign, labeled “Take Back Yoga,” does not ask yoga devotees to become Hindu, or instructors to teach more about Hinduism. The small but increasingly influential group behind it, the Hindu American Foundation, suggests only that people become more aware of yoga’s debt to the faith’s ancient traditions.

That suggestion, modest though it may seem, has drawn a flurry of strong reactions from figures far apart on the religious spectrum. Dr. Deepak Chopra, the New Age writer, has dismissed the campaign as a jumble of faulty history and Hindu nationalism. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has said he agrees that yoga is Hindu — and cited that as evidence that the practice imperiled the souls of Christians who engage in it. 

 Well, if Deepak Chopra is against it (and his excuses seem ridiculous based on the HAF's website) and Albert Mohler's discouraging Christians from engaging in it, I think the HAF is probably onto something here.  While like any group like this (including those Buddhists who look for science to "prove" Buddhism) there's the share of HAF claims that seem a bit over the top.  For example, I have read that Hinduism also owes debts to Jainism and Buddhism; Hinduism also evolved as reactions to these religions as well. 

But when it comes to the commoditization of practices, that, for want of a better term the word "spiritual" may be used (much as I loathe the term), I think a religious identification can't really hurt.