I feel like it might be time once again to address one the most frequent questions that comes to me:
Can you be my teacher?
I have addressed this before. I’m not even sure how many times. Maybe I should make it an annual thing. Or, given how often I’m asked, maybe I should just make one definitive post and put it up every three months.
The short answer is this:
No.
But if I left it at that I’d just sound mean. I don’t intend this in a mean way at all. It’s more like you’re asking me if I can make monkeys fly out of my butt. The answer to that is, unfortunately, also no. Like making monkeys fly out of my butt, my becoming your teacher is something I cannot possibly do even if I wanted to.
If you live in Northeast Ohio, or if you want to brave the snow and ice and come here, I will be starting a regular zazen class on Sunday evenings at 7pm at the Akron Shambhala Meditation Center at 133 Portage Trail in Cuyahoga Falls. This will begin on January 15th. If you show up, we can sit together and maybe talk a little bit. I’m also working on setting up a religious nonprofit in Los Angeles. The group I started there still meets every Saturday morning at 10 AM at 237 Hill Street in Santa Monica. You can find out about them by going to dogensanghalosangeles.org. Chances are good I will be attending the regular sittings there starting in the Spring. If I can get it together, that is. Meanwhile they still go on without me each and every week without fail.
But most of the people who ask me about my becoming their teacher live in places far from me. So I really have no idea what they imagine would happen if I said “yes.” Perhaps they imagine I have a center somewhere that they can run off to and escape their dreary humdrum lives into a world of beautiful Zen.
I understand that dream very well because I had that dream myself for a long time. I used to imagine that there were places out there somewhere — if I could only find them — where I could run away from all my troubles and just immerse myself in the wondrous dharma. But there are no such places anywhere.
Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery is about the closest thing I’ve ever seen to what I used to dream about. It’s beautiful, it’s isolated, it’s dedicated to Zen practice, it’s not a brainwashing cult. Tassajara is nice. But it’s also not a place you can run away to in order to escape your real life. Real life will hunt you down and find you even there. Some people try to escape their real lives by going way, way far away like to India or Japan. But real life always catches them. It caught me even in the mountainous wilds of Toyama Prefecture, Japan.
What I wanted when I dreamed of those places was really just to return to childhood. I wanted to have a new mommy and daddy who would look after me and deal with all the serious shit while I got to play. But, see, even my actual childhood wasn’t like that. My actual childhood was pretty miserable in a lot of ways. I was bullied and hassled and bored. So even saying that I dreamed of returning to childhood isn’t right. I dreamed of going to a dreamland that never existed because it couldn’t possibly exist.
I imagine some people out there who ask me about me becoming their teacher are offering themselves as submissives. They want to submit to me so I can be their master and they my slave. If you want that you can go to Genpo Roshi or Andrew Cohen. They take on submissives, I hear. Me, I wouldn’t get into a van with either of those guys. I don’t want any submissives. Not as Zen students anyhow.
Maybe the folks who ask about me becoming their teacher imagine we can create some kind of on-line teaching relationship. There are Zen teachers these days who take students on-line. To me that sounds like pure nonsense. But rather than speak in generalities about the concept of Zen teaching on-line, I’ll just tell you why I, Brad, do not do it.
I don’t do on-line Zen teaching because I really don’t like the on-line experience that much. I’m not that into sitting in front of computers typing things. And yet I’ve fallen into a line of work in which I am constantly sitting in front of a damned computer. It’s rare that I spend any less than four to six hours a day in front of this god forsaken machine. That’s pretty much the minimum requirement in terms of keeping up with my own books and other writing projects. Then I also have to answer emails from people I know personally, answer emails from people I don’t know from Adam who write to me, keep up the correspondence necessary to get speaking gigs and things and find cute animal videos on YouTube.
If I were to try to develop any on-line teaching relationships that would add at least another six hours a day of staring at a computer screen on top of what I do already. Plus I really have a bad memory in general. I have a hard time even recognizing people I know when I see them. People I know well are fine, but I’m constantly embarrassed when people I know just a little bit come up and start talking to me and I can’t recall who they are to save my life.
When it comes to people I know only as names on the top of email messages I am totally hopeless. I’d have to work out some kind of weird organization system just to keep up with who was who and what they said to me last time and what I replied. Just getting that together would be a couple hours a day. And would I get paid for any of that? Nope. So when am I going to be able to do the things I need to do to earn a living?
It’s just not gonna happen. I’m sorry. I know you’ve got serious issues and I know you like my books. I appreciate that you read what I write. I’d like to help. But I just can’t.
Then there’s all the issues I have in general with the whole notion of teachers and students. It isn’t always an abusive relationship of the type that Genpo Roshi and Andrew Cohen advocate in the link I provided above. But it’s so easy for it to devolve into that sort of thing. And this isn’t just because evil manipulative teachers evilly manipulate their innocent students into becoming mindless slave zombies while they sit back and go “Mwah-ha-ha-ha-HAAAAA!”
In fact, there is a whole great class of people out there who desperately want to be turned into mindless slave zombies. Anyone who takes on the role of a spiritual teacher has to invest tremendous time, effort and energy in dealing with these kinds of people. Some of them will insist upon becoming mindless slave zombies no matter how hard you try to tell them not to. Here is a perfect example of how that works:
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt just like Brian in this scene from Life of Brian. There are people out there who are exactly like the mob that follows him. And no matter how often you tell them not to follow you, they so desperately want to be led that they’ll follow you anyway. It can be really stressful. I actually admire the honest people out there who take on the role of the teacher because I know what they have to deal with. All the people who want to be turned into mindless slave zombies think they’re being very sincere and devoted. Which just makes it that much worse.
Watch that clip from Life of Brian again and pay close attention to the character played by John Cleese. He’s the guy up front who says, “I should know (you’re the messiah)! I’ve followed a few!” He takes on the guise of a follower. But he’s really not. He wants to lead the movement. But he hasn’t got the right sort of personality or charisma or whatever magic it takes to actually have people consider him to be the messiah. So he latches on to someone who has a following and offers to help that person maximize his potential.
This is very tempting because guys who do the sorts of things that get them followings are usually not really good at management type stuff. Plus it’s a lot of work to have students. This means it’s nearly impossible to take on students and have a normal paying job. So guys in Brian’s position who want to try to be teachers need to find someone to help them get butts in seats and keep the donations rolling in and so on. So people like the character John Cleese portrays here can be very attractive.
But those guys will destroy everything. And they’re everywhere. Almost all of them think they mean well. Some are very convincing. Oy! The stories I could tell you…
Anyway, this desire people have to be led is a really tremendous and very basic problem for humanity in general. This desire ends up causing all sorts of terrible tragedies like Naziism, Terrorism and the phenomenon of lousy boy bands and hair metal acts.
So that’s why I can’t be your teacher.
It’s not that I don’t like you or that I don’t think your problems are serious. It’s just that I can’t do it. I’m flattered that you asked. But you’re asking for something impossible, so I have to refuse.
******
Here’s an interview I just did. Maybe you’ll like it.
Oh! And my friend David Sango Angstead designed a new T-shirt/Hoodie/Bumper sticker etc. for me that you can get on my Red Bubble page. It’s a very cool design. I need to order one for myself!
Helps who?
Are you TEACHING, Brad? This comment seems very INSTRUCTIVE.
Does Hardcore Zen blog count now as an online sangha?
Thank you, Sensai Warner!
(paid for by Anonymous International, a momentary sub-division of DSI, or not)
Helps the pirate of course! Duh!
Thanks Brad. That's kinda what I'd gathered from here and there. I still haven't got Sit Down and Shut Up, although I liked the bits I read on Google books some time ago.
Seeing as how you know Japanese and that, how's this as a translation of the bit that's caused all the fuss and bother:
Monk 1: ‘What are you thinking about, sitting there doing nothing?’
Monk 2: ‘I’m thinking about not thinking.’
Monk 1: ‘How can you think about not thinking?!’
Monk 2: ‘Well…it’s altogether different from thinking.’
If that doesn't quite hit the mark, how would you translate it? I'd like to know, sincerely.
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…coz as I hear it, translating shiryo as 'thinking' is not so much the problem (you can't say 'I'm considering not considering ' can you?), it's making plain, ordinary sense of the fu and the hi – that's the thing that needs doing.
" I still haven't got Sit Down and Shut Up, although I liked the bits I read on Google books some time ago."
You seriously mean to tell me after all this time on Brad's blog, you can't be bothered to buy one single book and read it? It's a good book man. Buy it already.
I anxiously await the next one Brad.
…coz Brad, like it or not, unless you 'dig into this stuff linguistically' you can't translate it right. You might be able to do it, but you can't translate it. And some things need translating.
gniz – I'm still not working, mate. I've already got plenty of books I haven't read and can't afford any more…priorities n so forth. Seriously.
gotcha anon. sorry to bust your chops then.
Malcolm, you're still playing with the same band, though, yes? I know it doesn't pay much, though…
Just picked this up tonight, getting ready to watch:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1478964/
Looks promising. My brother-in-law in Hong Kong rec. it.
That's quite alright, g. A little helpful chop-busting might get me back to work one day!
Yes, still playing with the band, John (new recordings will be uploaded v soon) but the gigs are still absolutely unpaid – that's the way it is in London for 'original' bands without a deal these days – and I have to find a few quid every week to chip in for rehearsals.
I'll check the link tomorrow.
I like all of Brad's book except his latest one, which was not so hot. Haven't seen his recent mashup with his teacher, the one about the fundamental wisdom of the middle way.
Anyway, the latest solo effort by Brad wasn't up to snuff (in a keep-the-reader-interested sense). Not horrible, mind you, but I suspect the old boy's run his course.
Actually, just kidding. He hasn't run his course and I don't even know what that means. I think that I am probably in a different time and place than I was when I read his first three books, and so I have a different take on the latest one. I was just being jerkish when I blamed it on Brad.
I'll happily continue to buy Brad's solo books. I'm a fan and admirer.
Thanks, Brad, for the translation.
It's a puzzler, that Dogen would call "non-thinking" the pivot of zazen. Yes, ok, maybe he's referring to the state of mind, and the hypnogogic aspect of practice.
I have tried for years to explain (to myself, mostly) how zazen gets up and walks around. I think it's sort of the same thing as what Kobun described as "people who are moving around outside all sit with you", that is, there's almost a "sixth-sense" aspect of the mind that comes into sitting. This I think is also why the first of the arupa jhanas concerns the "infinity of ether", oftentimes in zazen I feel like my ability to breathe depends on the inclusiveness of my awareness. Another way to say that is, the ability of my mind to move, or the ability of the location of my awareness to move.
What's essential to zazen getting up and walking around is the ability to observe activity caused by the location of mind when people who are moving around outside are a part of that location of mind. This happens in hypnogogic states.
I like the monk who when asked what he was doing, replied he was doing nothing. When his questioner said that was idleness, the monk replied that if he were doing something, that would be idleness.
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"Can LSD be my teacher?"
Two students of Kobun Chino on acid:
Steve Jobs and Vanja Palmers.
How does a pirate smuggle drugs across the border?
Arrrrrrrgh, Matey! He hides them in his booty!
P-)
Mysti wrote: However, Japanese is a high context language so just WHAT ?? actually means (in terms of cognitive content) depends upon the CONTEXT in which it is being used. Archaic Japanese compounds the problem.
From what I've heard and understood, Chas, that's very true. For those of us who aren't 13th century Japanese speakers, translation is all we've got. (I'd still like to see Brad's version of the "What [are you] think[ing]?" dialogue).
Like I said, I don't think the confusion and fancy theories surrounding that passage are caused so much by what 'thinking' is as by what what 'non-thinking' might be. I'm suggesting that, in this context, hi-shiryo means something like 'different from thinking' or 'nothing to do with thinking' – and is not a description of some special kind of mental activity.
Here's a link to some 13th century Japanese-English character-by-character translation work, which, in addition to lots of other useful things, shows how much has to be surmised/filled in to render what's there into readable English:
http://www.the-middle-way.org/subpage8.html (part 1)
http://www.the-middle-way.org/subpage9.html (part 2)
And here's a section-by-section comparison of the two versions of Fukanzazengi:
http://www.dharmafield.org/coursehandouts/fukanzazengi/Comparison.pdf
– from which can be seen that the original version doesn't include the "What [are you] think[ing]"? dialogue. Instead – or at about the same place – it has:
(Original version) "Having brought the physical form to stillness, let the breathing also be regulated. When an idea arises, just wake up. Just in the waking up to it, it ceases to exist. Taking plenty of time, forget all involvements and you will spontaneously become all of a piece. This is the vital art of sittingzen."
[Later version: "Once you have adjusted your posture, take a deep breath, inhale and exhale, rock your body right and left and settle into a steady, immobile sitting position. Think of not-thinking. How do you think of not thinking? Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of zazen."]
The translator is not credited.
"Having brought the physical form to stillness, let the breathing also be regulated. When an idea arises, just wake up. Just in the waking up to it, it ceases to exist. Taking plenty of time, forget all involvements and you will spontaneously become all of a piece. This is the vital art of sittingzen."
Interesting translation, personally I respond more to this version. Imagine how people's efforts vary based on whether or not they come across certain translations, etc.
I think what this shows me is that the variations are endless and it really is how we decide to implement any particular practice that counts. In the end, we make the decisions for ourselves, no matter how much we try to walk in the footsteps of our teachers.
I loved the video 😀 This reminds me of a time when I asked someone to be my teacher. In my mind they were the most "enlightened" person I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Even if I did end up becoming some type of "apprentice" or whatever, by all the "positive" judgements, I would have set myself up for failure. Anyway, the answer he gave was simple. "I will not do the work for you. I recommend doing what I did, find the answers you need within yourself and be your own teacher".
This I believe is one of the reasons people so desperately want a "teacher"- because they don't want to do their own work, they want someone to do it for them, to provide all the answers and hold their hand along the way. We can be our own teachers. It simply requires us to truly listen…
In case there's any confusion, gniz, those two translations are translations of two different texts, not different translations of the same text. Dogen wrote two versions of Fukanzazengi.
BTW, that first link – "to some 13th century Japanese-English character-by-character translation work" – takes you to the original version of Fukanzazengi, which was written only using Chinese characters. Both versions of Fukanzazengi were written like that, unlike the Shobogenzo, which was written using Chinese kanji pictographs/ideographs and Japanese kana phonetics…it says here. Anyway, you can tell by looking at it.
I read somewhere that writing in Chinese only – for Dogen – might have been rather like a medieval European monk writing in Latin. If that's true, perhaps he wanted to give his "Universal Guide to the Standard Method of Zazen" the look and feel of an authoritative document; a classic (I've read that there were other, earlier Zazen instructional guides,'Zazengi', which Dogen must have read, presumably in China, and from which he quoted when he came to write his own).
In the end, we make the decisions for ourselves, no matter how much we try to walk in the footsteps of our teachers.
Can't argue with that.
Following that last quote (excellent), that is exactly what I was trying to say yesterday:
I have little doubt that I would've "noticed" anything like I crudely have tried to describe here without "just sitting" with it.
As far as I can see it, this is where the conclusions which result in the texts come from in the first place: practice. Find out what they mean in your own life. Otherwise, what good are they?
Upon meeting him, Rumi's teacher, Shams e-Tabrizi reportedly threw all his books in a well.
I am also reminded of the old alchemical maxim, ora et labora.
I very much like this one, too:
"When you find a place
Where you are
Practice begins." -Dogen
…or maybe he didn't exactly say that, or mean it the way it is translated here and as I understand it, but I have incorporated it into my own impetus to do something, and that something is "practice."
Hi Brad (and anyone else who cares to answer) This is way off topic but it is a real question. Is there any kindness in zen, heart, that is, hardcore = hardheart ?
In stripping everything down to what is "real" is the emotional being of human denied, it seems to have an immaturity to it a lack of wholeness (inclusive of the whole being), a coldness to it.
It does not seem that different to the purely secular mind with perhaps a rather hypocritical couple of "robes" thrown in, to at least have the pretense of something Transcending about it.
Just an observation of how it appears to me, all the best.
nemisisx: This depends entirely upon your definition of the term "zen" -which seems cursory and shallow at this point.
What are you basing this opinion on?
If you have waded through the 1,000's and 1,000's of pages of drivel Adi Da produced you can surely do a bit of research before making broad pronouncements on something you obviously know nothing about.
That Andrew Cohen video made me queezy!
Anon #108 said:
If that doesn't quite hit the mark, how would you translate it? I'd like to know, sincerely.
Your translation is good. "Altogether different from thinking" is pretty close. The best would be if you could somehow make an "i" prefix word like "illegal" or "immoral" out of the word "thinking." But you can't. That would get you close to the pun Dogen is making. Dogen is difficult to translate for a lot of reasons, one of which is that he uses tons of puns.
It's funny to me because after living in Japan as long as I did and speaking the language, I can now get the pun in its linguistic context. Yet I can't explain it very well. English just won't bend that way.
Still, like I've said before, I think Japanese probably often felt inadequate to Dogen the same as English often feels inadequate to us. So just to know precisely what he's doing linguistically doesn't necessarily get you any closer to what he actually meant. It could very well be that if Dogen had spoken English he might have found a way to express this idea better in English. We'll never know.
Thanks, Brad. That’s given me a much better idea of the flavour of hi-shiryo.
One thing though. The "What are you thinking in the still-still state" story is a conversation between Master Yakusan Igen (745 – 828) and a monk, and is included in the Shinji Shobogenzo and the Keitoku-dento-roku (says so in a footnote to Zazenshin in the N/C Shobogenzo). So I assume Dogen didn't make the pun himself, but was quoting the old record when he used it in Fukanzazengi (and Zazenshin). Mind you, whether or not Dogen takes credit for inventing “hi-shiryo” is hardly the point. Thanks again for the reply.
"Still, like I've said before, I think Japanese probably often felt inadequate to Dogen the same as English often feels inadequate to us. So just to know precisely what he's doing linguistically doesn't necessarily get you any closer to what he actually meant. "
So. We come full circle. Better just to sit down and shut up.
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The pivot of zazen, that doesn't sound like a pun, even if nonthinking is- sure wish you could explain that one just a little, Brad, but I'll forgive you if you don't!
Mysterion, thanks for the links, interesting read about Steve Jobs, and refreshing to read Vanja's words. He is nothing if not straightforward, and I value that.
Nemisisx, I think you are right in that most Zen teachers teach by negation, and emphasis a practice that is painful to most Westerners. So on the surface it's a long way from, say, Sufism and Rumi. Even Brad is usually at a loss for words to describe exactly why he feels sitting zazen is a beneficial practice, as though it were some kind of strange Japanese pun (ha ha!).
My premise has always been that without the happiness the Gautama the Buddha described as inherent in each of the meditative states (trance states in some translations), there was no way I was going to learn to sit the lotus. And even now, this is where I'm coming from: I'm looking for fun, when I sit. And this is what I find: when the pleasant as well as the unpleasant feeds back into my sense of place, and I open my ability to feel toward the skin and hair, I can wake up to the same experience I was just having without any doer, or I can fall asleep to the experience I was having in the midst of the act. Let me say it again, I can wake up or fall asleep right where I am.
Mark Foot said
Nemisisx, I think you are right in that most Zen teachers teach by negation, and emphasis a practice that is painful to most Westerners. So on the surface it's a long way from, say, Sufism and Rumi. Even Brad is usually at a loss for words to describe exactly why he feels sitting zazen is a beneficial practice, as though it were some kind of strange Japanese pun (ha ha!).
Thanks for the reply Mark, zen has always been a mystery to me, in that it does seem the most harsh of the Buddhist disciplines, if it is reduced merely to zazen or sitting as I understand it. Do most teachers suggest a social discipline of kindness and co-operation with others, or is the sitting seen as an growth practice that would produce similar results.
Where would I find more info about the Sunday night zazen class in the Falls? I looked at the link you provided, and they have no info. Thanks.
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http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/151269
"a "quietness" within which is neither happy nor sad, angry nor fearful, anxious nor depressed… that CENTER from which ever smaller ripples emanate."
This is kind of like what Tim Tebow has. When he is asked about teammates, he praises them. When he is asked about his coaches, he praises them. When he is asked about himself, he praises God.
Praise the Lord! And pass the collection bowl for Bradley, please.
John Keats wrote:
I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason – Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.
I've always found that this resonates with my mis-,not and non-understanding of such things as Dogen's words on not/non/thinking.
I often feel the impluse to re-read Ode On A Grecian Urn when reading Uji.
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Pray, expand Mystie-Pie – beyond man-handled Virginia – if you would.
Jesus H. Kringle…
Soft troll wrote:
I often feel the impluse to re-read Ode On A Grecian Urn when reading Uji.
How much does a Grecian Urn?
Let me solve all of your dilemmas, folks. Let us all bow before the God Man Adi Da, as he commands:
"Let us submit to the terrible ordeal that will serve all humanity, all five billion of those slugs who know nothing of me and who must find me out, who must find me out – they must find me. I Am the One Who has been expected. They must find me out. They must. They must…I am here in my lifetime to change the course of human history, and I want to see some evidence of it. No one on Earth compares to me. No one on Earth has this Mission, this Intention. No one! I am here to do it and I am here to see it, and now I am going to call you on it…I came at the beginning of World War II to keep you from getting involved in World War III. I am here to do my thing. You prayed for this. Mark my words. All this is prophecy…Drop everything and cling to me. Be fitted to the overwhelming heart-Purpose that is attracted to Me, committed to Me, will give up everything to be with Me and to Realize Me.
Worship Me by surrendering your separate self to Me. Surrender to Me in order to forget and transcend your separate self in Me.
I Am the Sign and the Revelation and the Proof of God in the world. I am the Way up from the pond…I Am the Way up from the pond. I Am the Way out. This is My Message."
There ya go? All problems solved.
Just for the record that is not me, (obviously), above, just someone targeting me -nemisisx
To (Fred, or who ever left that comment above) I won't post here any more brother, so you can have it to yourself, just don't use my handle in that manner, if you don't mind, bit of a low act in fact.
You have it ass up, the paradoxes of the Guru are not the point, Realization comes from the top down, in other words, Enlightenment comes first, everything passed that point no matter how weird or contradictory it seems, does not take away or effect that Realization. It's got nothing to do with so called objective reality because you are effectively in a dream bardo here.
What I mean by that is when you dream things, they are sort of half made, when the Guru appears in any time or place he is an extremely odd guy, full of paradoxes because he is just Non-Conditional Reality touching up against what is a "realm" (rather than how it is seen generally as merely solid and secular)
Unconditional Reality brushes against this place and you get the strange shape of a True Master, very, very rare.
They don't make sense and they scare the shit out of ego's because you are actually looking at the Divine Reality in a dreamscape situation. This whole realm is held together by fear.
If you just maintain an objective subjective convectional mind set, you can never make sense of it.
Nemisisx, as a commentator who has been around here a few years, I have some advice: don't let the trolls win.
Stick around and stick it out. If you want to find out more about Soto Zen, plus a mixed bag of other topics, and let your freak flag fly where it will (as in just about any ideas and opinions are accepted, but don't necessarily expect respect) this is the place for you.
Sometimes it seems more like Raging Id than Hardcore Zen, but nevertheless, it is rarely boring. Its a place for free play, a TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone) and is a hell of alot of fun.
But you have to have a thick skin, and simply stand up for yourself as you are if somebody's playing with you as it appears they are stealing your name, etc.
I think you have some useful things to share, and would like you to continue to do so… just my two cents. Peace.
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Thanks Mysterion, after folks get over the Adi Da subject, happy to talk about other subjects. I will get a real username.
The subject is a little bit reminiscent of the "sheep shagger" joke ( which I may tell another time.) But even more so the vegan joke, which only really makes sense if you are or have been a vegetarian
Q"How many vegans does it take to change a light bulb?"A: "Don't know but where do they get their protein?" all the best.