First off I have updated my book tour page again. Some of the specific locations for European gigs that have lacked them are now filled in, particularly in France.
I have also added info about the annual Dogen Sangha Zen retreat in Shizuoka. Since my new book is coming out in September, the organizers have moved the retreat to July. In past years people from overseas have been attending the retreats in Shizuoka. You’re always welcome to attend. It’s a good retreat. But contact the folks in Dogen Sangha Tokyo about it, not me. The contact info’s on their website.
Also, John Graves, who is now the president of Dogen Sangha Los Angeles, made this neat Sit Down and Shut Up/Shobogenzo Index. Check it out. He found all the references to specific parts of Shobogenzo in the book Sit Down And Shut Up and cross-referenced them so you could look ’em up if you wanted to. Why didn’t I do this myself? Because I am lazy, that’s why! But John did it and it is full of awesome. I’ve added it to the links section on the left as well.
I was chatting today via Skype to a friend of mine who is 21 years old. I seem to have a lot of friends considerably younger than me these days. But, then again, I never saw Nishijima interact with anyone less than twenty years his junior. Most people he hung out with were closer to forty years younger than him. Maybe it goes with the territory.
Anyway she’s got a whole lot of choices to make in life, as you do when you’re 21. And as you do when you’re 46 too. So I wrote her this:
“You have to decide what you love the most, I think. And go for that. And don’t believe people who say you can’t do it. I semi-believed those people and it really held me back. It turns out they were wrong. They’re still telling me I can’t do it even while I am actually actively doing it! This is kind of comical.”
It’s funny the things you say in response to people. I teach myself a lot that way, which is why I like doing Q&A; sessions and interviews. But it’s really true. There seem to always be naysayers who delight in cutting you down and trying to make you feel like you’re not capable. It’s important to know how to tell those people to go fuck themselves. Sometimes you have to say it politely. Sometimes you have to say it only to yourself. But it’s important to be able to say it.
Chuck Schodowski was a popular horror movie host in Cleveland, half of the teams Hoolihan and Big Chuck and later Big Chuck and Little John. He inherited his position from the great Ernie”Ghoulardi” Anderson (director Paul Thomas Anderson’s dad) who preceded him. Chuck took a lot of shit when he started because his style was very different from Ghoulardi’s.
In his book, Chuck talks about a letter he got from Ernie Anderson when this was going on. If the book wasn’t in storage I’d quote it directly instead of from my poor memory. But Ernie Anderson said something like, “If the people who are telling you you’re doing it wrong could do it themselves, they’d be doing it themselves. Guts it, baby, guts it!”
It’s good advice. We all have a role to play and there are always those around you who’ll stupidly envy you and think they could do whatever it is you do better, if only. I used to hear this kind of shit from lots of folks when I worked at Tsuburaya Productions, guys who knew that if they just got out of mom’s basement they’d do so much better marketing Ultraman than I was doing. Now I hear it from people who’d be so much better Buddhist writers if only someone would give them a book deal. But there’s a reason you’re in the position you are and those guys are not. So they can all suck it.
As for the wide world of choices… it never ends. When I was 21 I woulda figured that by age 46 I’d either have had everything worked out or I’d be dead. As it turns out neither option panned out. These days my best advice to myself is to do what I love the most, to the best of my ability to do so. Sometimes your own karma places you into a position where it seems like you have no options. But I’ve stopped believing that. There’s always some way to make whatever situation you find yourself in into a place you want to be. I’ve even managed to do this in endless traffic jams on the Los Angeles freeway system, or in a hospital bed with kidney stones so bad I thought the pain alone might kill me.
I made a lot of mistakes because I half-believed those who said I couldn’t ever accomplish the things I truly wanted to do. I majored in history in college not because I liked it that much, but because I believed those who told me I’d never be able to land a career in the film business. Much less in the film business in Japan making giant monster movies. That I’d have far better of a chance getting a job teaching history in high school. All those people can suck it.
And still there they are! Look in the comments section of this very blog and you’ll still find people telling me I can’t do what I am already doing. They’re clever enough not to put it in those words. But that’s the message. They can suck it too.
When they tell you the same thing, just remember they can suck yours as well.
Guts it, baby.
Yes 108 and Harry.. True enough. I'm thinking of all the fun-house versions of ourselves we put up here on this blog. I've heard people say that even Brad does this. That he is actually quite mild mannered and rarely tells people to "suck it" off stage.
why no comment about your zen talk in baltimore?
There's nothing hardcore about Soto zen. Most women practice Soto Zen so I guess if you want to pick up chicks that would be the way to go. But Soto Zen for the most part is gay. "Oh look at us sitting and staring at the wall just like Bodhidharma. Aren't we enlightened?" Just sitting is not enlightenment, enlightenment is awakening to your Buddha nature. Yes, we're all Buddha's, no we are not all enlightened. Get your head out of your lazy Soto asses.
"Rinzai for the samurai and Soto for the peasants"
"Oh look at us sitting and staring at the wall just like Bodhidharma. Aren't we enlightened?"
Us? We? Who? Huh?
On a related note, I propose a branching-off from the Soto school. Call it 'DeSoto.' Lotsa chrome. Waycool.
… I rest my case! :-0
Regards,
H.
Practice like your 1957 De Soto Firedome is lit.
"Rinzai for the samurai and Soto for the peasants"
Ah yes, that old romantic notion. Yes, the samurai loved Zen because it did not require them to be able to read. Rinzai Monasteries funded themselves with the support of the ruling governors and the samurai worked for those governors and thus "Rinzai for the samurai".
Soto priests took their work to the people and occupied the abandoned Shinto temples and thus: "Soto for the peasants".
Lineage is a fact. Lineage is important as it provides a valuable link to authentic teaching. However, last time I checked I was not a samurai or a peasant. Just another white guy behind a desk. No romantic ideals apply.
Just sit on the fucking cushion and drop all of the labels. Then drop the label dropping.
and yea, I am ordained in Soto and Rinzai
If we're going to play the "I'm more tolerant and open-minded than you game" then I'm going to go and get ordained in every sect, that includes the Kwan Um school and the Obaku school and all the other schools. Consider me the Zen Voltron of the future.
Then, when some wannabe Soto-Rinzai hybrid guy comes at me with the old "go beyond the labels" routine I can just flash my resume of 5 ordinations and be like "yeah, buddy, why don't you have a look at that and then tell me to drop the labels."
This is my dream.
Just sitting is not enlightenment, enlightenment is awakening to your Buddha nature.
The trick is, you're not going to awaken to it until you stop seeking for it. Because seeking is always looking "over there" when it's actually "right here." So the best way to awaken is to sit AS IF you are already enlightened.
Auspicious comment number 108.
Samurai – saburai
"The Term samurai originally meant "those who serve in close attendance to nobility", and was written in the Chinese character (or kanji) that had the same meaning. In Japanese, it was originally pronounced in the pre-Heian period as saburau and later as saburai, then samurai in the Edo period. In Japanese literature, there is an early reference to samurai in the Kokinsh? (???, early 10th century): Attendant to nobility
Ask for your master's umbrella
The dews 'neath the trees of Miyagino
Are thicker than rain
source
Oh attendant, fetch me a vomit bucket!
Can we get over the myth of understanding the caste system in feudal Japan? Ignorance leads to suffering and if you wish to overcome ignorance on this point, research the 22 castes of feudal Japan. Samurai were vomit bucket boys. Seriously!
The entire subject is unspeakable> in Japan – post 1868. Suffice to say: "In 1868, Japan's feudal era came to an end, and the samurai class was abolished."
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I'd carry buckets of vomit everyday so long as I could wear a cool sword and practice archery all day long. Come on guy, who you kidding? Rinzai brought us martial arts, tea ceremonies, and rock gardens, while Soto just brought us a lonely lifeless cushion and blank wall to stare at. Rinzai is just bad-ass in general.
Good post jinz, except for this;
"So the best way to awaken is to sit AS IF you are already enlightened."
The best way? Great faith (sitting as if already enlightened) is the soto way and can be very effective.
Great doubt (sitting questioning / koan) is the rinzai way and can also be very effective.
Which is best depends upon the individual…despite much sectarian rhetoric from all sides.
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"Lineage is a fact. Lineage is important as it provides a valuable link to authentic teaching."
Yeah, that's the zen myth anyway. Unfortunately, it just provides a link to some teacher that got their xmission from their teacher…
"What’s more, though Zen, in general, makes superhuman claims for the master based on his spiritual attainment, in S?t? Zen, the largest Zen sect in Japan, enlightenment is not at all a prerequisite for receiving Dharma transmission. Rather, only personal initiation between a master and disciple is required. Zen’s mythology notwithstanding, Dharma transmission is only an institutional sanctioning of a teacher bestowing membership in a teaching lineage and may be no more than, as Buddhist scholar Holmes Welch said “like [getting] a Flash Gordon pin.”15 It tells us actually nothing of spiritual attainment or character, and it was designed that way from the beginning."
Stuart Lachs / The Zen Master in America
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"They're still telling me I can't do it even while I am actually actively doing it! This is kind of comical."
Indeed!
Discriminating, I know, but here it goes anyways: Here's to endeavoring to understand the motions of the Dharma wheel, rather than just blindly spinning it around?
Which is best depends upon the individual…despite much sectarian rhetoric from all sides.
You're right. Thanks for speaking up.
Motivation?
What's that?
In the middle of the night we get up and pee because we need to get up and pee. I guess we are motivated to get up and pee by a force of nature.
In the early morning I get up and sit because I need to get up and sit. I guess I are motivated to get up and sit by a force of my nature.
Peeing and Zazen. Zazen and peeing.
No difference.
Motivation?
What is motivation?
Is it a bean>?
What's that old saying?
The force that through the stem drives the flower also drives my green age. (or words to that effect)
yep, I are…
Some people speak a lot to say very little when they could just as easily speak nothing and say the same thing. That would be so beautiful.. But I guess that would go against the force of their perfect nature.
you could pee in bed though, right?
"in the middle of the night we get up and pee because we need to get up and pee. I guess we are motivated to get up and pee by a force of nature.
In the early morning I get up and sit because I need to get up and sit. I guess I are motivated to get up and sit by a force of my nature."
Myterion, What are you trying to say.. Did you mean sit or shit?
What's that old saying?
The force that through the stem drives the flower also drives my green age. (or words to that effect)
Uncle Di:
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
Peeing on oneself is enlightenment. In that awakened state there is no urine to expel nor any entity that would receive it. One simply achieves unity with the infant consciousness, where no further practice is needed.
1
Anonymous
Dogen never said, or wrote:
"realize…enlightened ones…awakening the mind for enlightenment…attain enlightenment…The bringing about of enlightenment…effecting of realization…enlightened Mind…strive to awaken…When human beings attain enlightenment…become enlightened"
Dogen did not speak or write english, so you are right. The translations quoted were from multiple sources and all used the english words for enlightenment. Either realization, awakening or enlightenment.
This is from Ted Biringer (The Flatbed Sutra of Louie Wing);
"Dogen frequently dwells on the need for enlightenment, asserting with all the classic Zen masters that “awakening the bodhi mind is the foremost task.” But he rarely uses terms that differentiate a “first” or “initial” enlightenment experience from succeeding experience. Rarely using the usual Zen term, “kensho,” Dogen refers to the “state of enlightenment” with a number of terms including, “the condition of Buddhahood,” “the still still state,” “arrival in the field of the ineffable,” and others. However, his favorite term for this experience is, “casting off body and mind.”
From reading Dogen before encountering Soto teachings about Dogen, I never got the impression he was that far from other zen masters of any sect. Whatever actual terms Dogen
used to describe it, it is clear from any outside (nonsoto) observer that he was talking about a discreet moment in time when there is an insight into the nature of reality. He makes this clear when he talks of those attaining enlighenment from a shout or seeing peach blossoms, etc.
They might well say that although a kensho or satori experience is valuable – even essential – it's certainly not the be-all and end-all of practice."
You are absolutely correct. Not only is it not the end-all, but it is considered only a first baby-step (4th oxherding pic). Master Seung Sahn (a korean lin chi master) also used to say that 'wanting enlighenment is a very bad sickness'. Many other zen masters echo this. It seems the two main zen sects frequently try to distort the teachings of the other. "Shikantaza is just dead-sitting with a vacant mind" "Working on a koan is just thinking and not authentic zazen".
…thought it might be you, Ted – or your agent 😉
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Dogen did not speak or write english…The translations quoted were from multiple sources and all used the english words for enlightenment.
Huh?
Herein lies the/a problem, I think.
Supposing your sentence wasn't an oversight – that'd be unlike you, Ted – it assumes that there's a generally understood, universally acknowledged fact, known in English as "enlightenment".
I wonder what it might be?
Dharma transmission is only an institutional sanctioning of a teacher bestowing membership in a teaching lineage and may be no more than, as Buddhist scholar Holmes Welch said “like [getting] a Flash Gordon pin.”15 It tells us actually nothing of spiritual attainment or character, and it was designed that way from the beginning."
I would be interested to hear Brad's thoughts on this topic. I remember reading in "Sit Down…" that he was surprised when his teacher wanted him to receive dharma transmission. I've also noticed that in the Zen lineage, Teachers have only a handful of heirs…so I would hope that there is more consideration in Dharma Transmission than just getting into the "club".
I agree that having received Dharma Transmission says nothing about a Teacher's "spiritual" attainment or character, that we can perceive. But isn't that something WE read into that title? Maybe we expect too much of them? Maybe we take ourselves, and them, too seriously?
Sorry anon, I'm not Ted. Hopefully I can clear up that confusing sentence. I meant all of the translations (not japanese sources themselves) I had read used words that we equate with enlightenment. None said; "Dogen attained flatulence upon hearing Ju ching's words" or anything of that nature.
Of course all of these translators may be wrong to use any of those terms (realization, enlightenment, etc). Maybe he really meant flatulence.
Sorry for the mis-attribution, not-Ted. And please – call me 108 🙂
I hear you, but I think my point at 8.31am still stands.
Perhaps I have just as much of a problem with the phrases that 'enlightenment' etc usually find themselves in – like "attained enlightenment"…"achieved awakening" and so forth.
I prefer '[had]an insight into the nature of reality" (your phrase), or 'realized/noticed something…' – so avoiding the reification of "enightenment" as a state; a consciouness other than the one all experience, normally.
Words, eh!
What can you do?
My two cents, folks: "Had an insight into the nature of reality", as lucid as it may sound, but it might be no less subject to misunderstanding – as if there was any "special" mode of "reality" to have seen.
In my opinion, it could push the misunderstanding under the table, moreover.
I like to refer to kensho. I think it's not become a cliche, as yet.
To each their own, as ever >
"Had an insight into the nature of reality", as lucid as it may sound, but it might be no less subject to misunderstanding – as if there was any "special" mode of "reality" to have seen.
Fair point, Sean.
What about, "had an insight into the nature of this very ordinary reality" ?
– I'm sure if we keep going, we can nail this once and for all 😉
How ordinarily insightful! >
I'm sure there's a kensho verification check-list somewhere.
"Perhaps I have just as much of a problem with the phrases that 'enlightenment' etc usually find themselves in – like "attained enlightenment"…"achieved awakening" and so forth."
108, just to close out this line of thought; I agree. I hate those words associated with enlightenment too. Saying I attained satori is like saying I attained my lungs.
But if we back out of the semantics and peculiarities of soto zen for a moment we find the buddhist sutras clearly acknowledge that something changed under the bo tree for sidhartha. Of course, he 'attained' nothing at all. The Lankavatara sutra speaks of the necessity of a turning about at the seat of consciousness. This can all get romanticized and mythologized as some special, trippy experience to be grasped. But there can be problems associated with suggesting that satori isn't real or important too.
When you say 'just this right here', deluded people see it as in a dream. Satori is just waking up to what is right here and now. Stop dreaming and it's there. Just my 2 cents.
Anonymous Rinzai or die said…
Peeing on oneself is enlightenment. In that awakened state there is no urine to expel nor any entity that would receive it. One simply achieves unity with the infant consciousness, where no further practice is needed.
Hmmm… I can identify with part of that… It'd not an entirely awakened state in which I peed on myself. There WAS a certain unity in the exercise albeit not Zazen.
Anonymous commenter said: "Saying I attained satori is like saying I attained my lungs"
No doubt.
If I'd been missing my lungs, or dreaming I was breathing via paper bags in my chest, I would be glad to have attained my lungs.
No doubt. There is no correction with what is not incorrect.
"This can all get romanticized and mythologized as some special, trippy experience to be grasped."
Would that be like at a point where Venerable Shakyamuni initiates a laser light show under the Bodhi tree? (How is the modern scientific mind supposed to look at that, by the way, oh ye trees and mud cows and people?)
Gosh, there is so much effective material here!