So I’ve been reading Zen Buddhism: A History by Heinrich Dumoulin. This is the classic text on the history of Zen from its beginnings in India to its flowering in Japan. I’ve bought this two volume set several times over the years, always failing to read it. My pattern is that I keep the books for about two years, then realize I’ll never get around to them and sell them to a used bookstore. Then a few years later I come across another set (or perhaps the same one!), buy it again, and then two years later sell it back, unread.
Don’t judge me too harshly. Vol. 1 is 350 pages and Vol. 2 adds another 100 more. It’s not Lord of the Rings either. It’s very dry and scholarly. As befits its title, the book sticks to the history of the Zen movement without trying to enlighten its readers with pearls of kozmic wizdum. Thank the stars.
This time my friend Leslie kindly bought me a set – probably the same set I sold back to the Illiad bookstore when I moved to Philadelphia. I’ve set my sights on finishing the whole damned thing this time. Wish me luck!
In many ways the history of Zen Buddhism is one story told over and over. And that story goes something this this.
Someone meditates for a long time and has a profound insight into the nature of reality. He or she then decides to try and teach that insight and how to reach it to others. This goes fine for a little while, but then an institution is established to try and make the lessons more standardized, efficient and accessible. At this point certain people notice that there are opportunities for power, authority and money to be had within that institution so they get involved. Once these weasels start running things the original purpose is lost. Then someone else has to come along, call bullshit on the institution and start the whole thing up again as an outsider. The same pattern occurs with predictable regularity.
Right now in the West, we are in one of these transitional periods. Back in Japan, Zen has become an orthodox institution that offers its members opportunities for power, authority and sometimes even money. Disgusted with this situation, a few sincere practitioners packed up and moved to America and Europe. They found some genuine students and started a few temples. But now those temples are growing in stature and importance, and ambitious people are starting to see that they might be able to climb their institutional ladders and become powerful. The rot is setting in.
This process is still in its infancy, so things haven’t gotten too bad just yet. Whenever I complain about the organizations who are trying to standardize the Zen curriculum into mind-numbing uselessness I’m always told something like, “Aw, but these guys aren’t a giant evil institution! They’re just a nice group of low-key people who want to do good things.” Which I’m sure is more-or-less true. But you don’t have to be a genius to see where things are heading.
Sex scandals like those involving Eido Shimano and Joshu Sasaki have given our current crop of ambitious power grabbers a convenient handle to grab onto. They use this situation to present themselves as the ones who will deliver us from evil by forming a mighty organization that will crush those who would do harm to poor innocents who decide to check out meditation classes. It’s a well-worn politicians’ trick. I’m sure it’ll work.
If I had a good solution to all of this I’d propose it here. But I don’t. Some people shun institutionalization completely, like U.G. Krishnamurti, for example. This Indian “anti-guru” refused to let people build up an institution to enshrine his work. In the preface to his book Mind is a Myth he says, “My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody.”
But look what I just did. I linked the title of his book through Amazon’s Associates program. If you click on that link and buy the book, or indeed any other item from Amazon while in that session, I get like 25 cents or something. It’s very hard to be pure.
Right now I’m working on setting up my own evil empire. I’m trying to start a permanent Zen center in Los Angeles. I think this center will be a good thing, or else I wouldn’t do it. But it has just as much potential to go wrong as any other institution. I keep asking myself; Is it really worth doing?
Sometimes I think it would be more fun to just start a cult. I could be like Father Yod who founded The Source. Go watch the movie The Source Family if you want to see how to do a sex, drugs, rock’n’roll and spirituality cult right. Those people were pretty looney, but they had a damned good time. And, although you could say that people were harmed, they probably weren’t wounded any worse than what you can get if you join pretty much any of our more “normal” religious organizations.
Sadly, I’m not as cool as Father Yod. Much as I’d love to have a swimming pool full of my own “spirit wives,” I probably don’t have the drive and will power necessary to keep anything like that going for very long. I’ve hung out with some polyamorous people and for all the good times they certainly have, there is a price to pay in terms of having to constantly work on multiple relationship issues. While I have no problem with others wanting to do this sort of thing, frankly, I’d rather sit around watching Thundarr the Barbarian instead of pouring my energy into lots of complex interpersonal negotiations.
And so I’m starting a Zen institution of my own. It may be the biggest mistake I have ever made. I certainly anticipate that it is. But I really believe that, for a little while at least, the kind of institution I’m envisioning might have a positive effect, might make people a little happier, a little less uptight, maybe even a tiny bit wiser.
Then, of course, someone will see in my institution an opportunity for authority and power. At that point it’ll be ripe for someone else to call bullshit on it and try again.
UPCOMING EVENTS
March 15, 2015 Ventura, CA Yoga and Zen with Brad Warner and Nina Snow at the Bell Arts Factory 432 N. Ventura Ave from 9:30 AM to 12:00 PM by donation.
April 3, 2015 Pomona, CA Open Door 2 Yoga 6 pm 163 W 2nd St, Pomona, California 91766
April 24-26, 2015 Mt. Baldy, CA 3-DAY ZEN & YOGA RETREAT
May 16-17, 2015 Nashville, TN 2-DAY RETREAT AT NASHVILLE ZEN CENTER
July 8-12, 2015 Vancouver, BC Canada 5-DAY RETREAT at HOLLYHOCK RETREAT CENTER
August 14-16, 2015 Munich, Germany 3 DAY ZEN RETREAT
August 19, 2015 Munich, Germany LECTURE
August 24-29, 2015 Felsentor, Switzerland 5-DAY RETREAT AT STIFTUNG FELSENTOR
August 30-September 4, 2015 Holzkirchen, Germany 5-DAY RETREAT AT BENEDIKTUSHOF MONASTERY
September 10-13, 2015 Finland 4-DAY RETREAT
ONGOING EVENTS
Every Monday at 8pm I lead zazen at Silverlake Yoga Studio 2 located at 2810 Glendale Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90039. All are welcome!
Every Saturday at 9:30 am I lead zazen at the Veteran’s Memorial Complex located at 4117 Overland Blvd., Culver City, CA 90230. All are welcome!
Registration is now open for our 3-day Zen & Yoga Retreat at Mt. Baldy Zen Center April 24-26, 2015. CLICK HERE for more info!
Plenty more info is available on the Dogen Sangha Los Angeles website, dsla.info
* * *
If you want to help me woo my future spirit wives, send a donation! Actually it mostly just helps me get burritos and pay the water bill. Thank you!
I’ve been trying to read The Zen Experience by Thomas Hoover for about a year now. I keep it in my man-purse just in case but I keep finding other books I’d rather read instead. I have never been to a Zen center but would like to. I live just a few hours from LA and if you open one I’d like to visit, so best of luck.
I’ve really been enjoying your posts, lately, Mr. Warner. Great stuff all the way around and a true reminder of why YOU’RE OUR LAST ONLY HOPE TO DEVELOP A ZEN ORGANIZATION THAT WILL PROTECT THE REST OF US.
In all seriousness, though, this pattern is true of any movement. Democracy and Communism, for example, were cool ideas, but then people figured out–very early on–how to get power and rich off of them. So we should remain skeptical of any person or group that offers some sort of organized salvation from something shitty going on.
Also: Thundarr is awesome. Definitely much less work than polyamory.
I think you’re a bit of an anarchist at heart (I think that’s a good thing rather than an insult), and I think what Colin Ward said about how anarchist societies should work applies here:
“They should be voluntary for obvious reasons. There is no point in our advocating individual freedom and responsibility if we are going to advocate organisations for which membership is mandatory.
They should be functional and temporary precisely because permanence is one of those factors which harden the arteries of an organisation, giving it a vested interest in its own survival, in serving the interests of office-holders rather than its function.
They should be small precisely because in small face-to-face groups, the bureaucratising and hierarchical tendencies inherent in organisations have least opportunity to develop.”
Was it Beat poet Bob Kaufman who wrote, “I am an atheist who prays”? Well, I’m an anarchist who votes. But I like what Ammon Hennacy told a baffled cop, “An anarchist is someone who doesn’t need a policeman to tell him how to behave.”
You can, of course, be an anarchist right here & now, though it won’t do anything for a speeding ticket.
Maybe sitting up straight isn’t such bad advice!
https://www.yahoo.com/health/sitting-with-your-legs-crossed-4-reasons-to-stop-113359313402.html
But I really believe that, for a little while at least, the kind of institution I’m envisioning might have a positive effect, might make people a little happier, a little less uptight, maybe even a tiny bit wiser.
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How long is a “little while”? (How Long is also Chinaman). I’m reminded of Minority Report, where people were arrested before crimes were actually committed. Maybe you could have psychics on your staff, who can predict authority- and power-grabs before they happen? (But then you’d have to consider the possibility of corrupt psychics with their own axe to grind).
It’s basically a hopeless endeavor – so best of luck with it! Kind of like goal-less sitting. Maybe there will be unexpected positive side-effects.
That pattern you delineated of the Zen movement is kind of what encouraged Hegel’s “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” approach. It’s interesting…
Anyways…
“I’ve hung out with some polyamorous people and for all the good times they certainly have, there is a price to pay in terms of having to constantly work on multiple relationship issues.”
It’s not compatible with Zen practice to be polyamorous and should be discouraged. Lay practitioners are best off monogamous or celibate whereas monks or higher-level practitioners are celibate.
Keep your dick in your pants around others. The polyamorous mind is like a constant bombardment of television, ads and all the trappings of a hierarchical society when you can’t keep it in your pants. It is the embodiment of everything that is bad in modernity and industrialization.
I believe we’re living in the Kali Yuga, under a conformist hegemonizing post-industrial capitalist system, because of the loss of traditional values that originally placed emphasis on gnosis or other forms of transcendence. People are no longer in communion with the Sacred.” Hippie bullshit from people like Father Yod is the first step towards greater decadence.
Just acknowledge it, Brad, society will collapse soon, and with it the whole Western strategic hegemony will also collapse. What you should be looking into is permaculture and self-sustainability skills and not this bullshit involving institutions.
Read this guy’s poetry who committed suicide due to corporate stress in China:
https://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide-poetry
You’re going to have a lot more of that in the future.
The way to show compassion? Don’t give a fuck. There’s no way you can help those who have faith in the “continual advancement of mankind in modernized, industrialized countries”. It’s reaching a point where it’ll collapse, but that’s just way civilizations progress and fall. We have never been at any crossroads, and anyone that argues it is full of shit. To place faith in the capability of institutions to solve anything is delusional and naive.
Those SotoShoe guys know how to wield power.
One way of viewing your advice, SH, is as the ranting of an immature, moralistic prig projecting their own sexual insecurity on those whose sexual orientation is seen as alien.
Long stretches of celibacy can be USEFUL for the the process of seeing things without any of those human attributions…
the the the the the the the the the the the pussy farts of an amoeba.
A better example than U.G. would be Nisargdatta. UG may not have created an institution, but he did get financial support, in particular from an older wealthy woman who seemed completely devoted to him and paid all his expenses for the whole of his life. Nisargadatta, on the other hand, refused all financial support. He was a householder, and raised and supported a family with his own retail bidi business in a very poor section of Mumbai. He had people up to his living room to teach in the evenings. People offered him all sorts of money to create a big ashram with all the trappings that go with it. He refused completely. He didn’t refuse because he didn’t need the money. He and his family suffered all the usual sorts of financial problems one encounters in that part of the world. He didn’t even bother explaining why he refused support. He just thought it was obvious that it had to be done this way.
Papaji was similar. He worked all his life, even long after his “enlightenment”, and finally retired at the age of 55 with a company pension that allowed him to live comfortably thereafter. Not only did he support himself and his immediate family, he also rescued his entire extended family from Pakistan during the murderous chaos and resettled them in Lucknow, 33 or so people, and supported them for years as they got back on their own feet. When he became a teacher, he also refused all financial support. He famously said that anyone who charges money for satsang is a fraud. He treated spirituality as a sacred matter, not to be sullied by financial transactions. He too refused wealthy benefactors who wanted to set him up with an ashram and institution and all that. He said that was the death of real spirituality. When asked about the benefits of spiritual community, he said that the benefit was that it took all the crazy, delusional people and put them in one place, leaving the genuinely free people to roam the earth undisturbed.
But, whatever. Brad clearly thinks there’s a benefit to creating a Zen Institute around him in LA. He’s got to make a living somehow, I guess. It’s just that the benefit of doing this may not accrue to the people who join up, but as Papaji says, to the people who don’t.
” U.G. Krishnamurti, for example. This Indian “anti-guru” refused to let people build up an institution to enshrine his work.”
U.G. was an asshole who pissed on everything. There was no work to enshrine.
UG may not have created an institution, but he did get financial support, in particular from an older wealthy woman who seemed completely devoted to him and paid all his expenses for the whole of his life. Nisargadatta, on the other hand, refused all financial support.
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UG had a “sugar mommy”? Never heard that. Like Pannonica (“Nica”) de Koenigswarter? She basically provided for the needs of jazz musicians like Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pannonica_de_Koenigswarter
Papaji was similar. He worked all his life, even long after his “enlightenment”, and finally retired at the age of 55 with a company pension that allowed him to live comfortably thereafter.
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I just read a great Papaji anecdote in of all places, Sam Harris’ new book Waking Up. On pgs. 132-3, he relates the story of a woman who was declared “enlightened” by Papaji (apparently this happened a lot, cf. Andrew Cohen) who traveled to Nepal from Lucknow with a group of seekers (including Sam) to see Dzogchen teacher Urgyen Rinpoche. The “enlightened” woman declared to Urgyen that “my mind is completely still. It’s just pure consciousness”. Urgyen replied “We are all going to wait for you to have your next thought. There’s no hurry. We are all very patient people. We are just going to sit here and wait.”
Sam notes: “Over the next 30 seconds, we watched this woman’s enlightenment completely unravel. It became clear that she had merely been thinking about how expansive her experience of consciousness had become…She had been telling herself the story of her enlightenment…Being able to stand perfectly free of the feeling of self is the start of one’s spiritual journey, not the end”.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8UMV3EWIcHU/S8dd5fNK_0I/AAAAAAAAArY/wUpVnL1ZM2w/s1600/Europe72.jpg
You should really look at how the Quakers organize. Rather than have an institution with power over the individual meetings, the individual meetings get together on a regular basis and hash things out. There’s an institution, but it has no power. It’s just there for bookkeeping.
UG had a “sugar mommy”?
Yes, I had lunch with her and UG one afternoon in the summer of ’74 in Saanen. A nice woman, but with seemingly no real clue about spirituality. But she certainly liked UG, and literally paid for everything. They lived and travelled together virtually constantly, but maintained that they had no sexual relationship. Which was probably the case.
I also met Papaji that summer. Didn’t know it at the time, but apparently someone pointed out UG to Papaji on the street one day, and said that he was a spritual. Papaji immediately marched over to UG, confronted him on the street, and said, “You’re no guru,” and told him he shouldn’t be teaching people, since he lacked the qualifications for it. UG was taken aback and had nothing to say. He later learned who Papaji was, and back in India met with him. At one point in the conversation, UG said that he didn’t think much of spiritual experiences. Papaji said, “That’s because you haven’t had any.” That meeting went no better than the first one.
Moorty:
“In all such contradictions you begin to wonder who U. G. is. Is there such a person at all? There may be no such person as U. G., although you may find the recurrence of certain preferences, prejudices and recognitions of a person whom we know as U.G. over a period of time. The “Energy” he talks about responds to each situation according to the demands of the situation. There are only these discrete responses to situations but no continuous person who connects in and through thought and memory these responses. How can one be like that and yet have memory, make projects which involve connecting one thing with another in time, etc., is all a mystery to the observer, a big unknown. U. G. says that from where he is (or for him) there is no problem: his brain is responding to situations mechanically like a computer machine, there being no one to direct a response or coordinate several responses. In fact, even each sense may be acting independently of other senses. ”
Conrad, did you find that Adi Da was similar in that he responded to what was present in front of him.
If you don’t wish to speak about Da, it’s OK.
Forget it. Setting up any sort of organisation in the West today will be a disaster. It will become a commercial organisation from the get go. Now is the time to do what the Taoist and Buddhist hermits did in Communist China: Take to the mountains and just cultivate tao/zen quietly with a small group of like minded individuals.
Damn right! I agree.
Trungpa should have had a few drinks and interviewed U.G. and J. Krishnamurti at the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqL9c4jYigk
Wow! Fred mentions Trungpa just as I’m about to see a friend who used to babysit his kids!
Coincidence? . . . or leakage from the Cosmic Plan?
“…or leakage from the Cosmic Plan?”
In my jaundiced opinion the Cosmic Plan needs some Depends.
Cheers.
Everyone responds to the situation in front of them. But some people make a big deal out of themselves by claiming they are special in how they do that. Adi Da was no different. UG thought he was a very special animal. So did Da. That’s what makes them so ordinary.
Didn’t Da have some patron-ish old ladies supporting him at the very beginning before the L.A. ashram opened?
Of course he ran the gauntlet from there in terms of financial support: 10% tithes (very church-like) from all new members, celebrity bequests (island of Naitauba purchased for him by a sympathetic corporate entrepeneur), selling his used Q-tips for $108 via private auction to broke devotees) etc. etc. etc.
Note to Brad: please don’t go that route – we value your humanity as you go forward…
Originally, Da had mafiosoish drug dealers from NYC helping finance him. Then he discovered the wonders of tithing and trust-funders.
“selling his used Q-tips…Note to Brad: please don’t go that route — we value your humanity as you go forward…”
But I heavily value Brad’s used Q-tips. They offer me the earwax of enlightenment.
Cheers.
But I heavily value Brad’s used Q-tips. They offer me the earwax of enlightenment.
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“Guaranteed to remove stubborn samskaras”
http://www.truby.com/xzq/qtip.htm
I’d wait until the Dogen Sangha is bringing in a gazillion dollars in donations before I’d worry about getting corrupted.
Speaking of sitting up straight, I don’t, but then again worker’s comp said that was ok. I wonder at the advice to keep both feet flat on the floor; I always have one flat and one tucked in with the ball of the foot on the floor.
Brad took lessons from this guy, on resisting the temptation to respond to things on this comment thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC9GXlYb-ek
Adi Da was kind of creepy.
There’s this annoying reviewer on Amazon named L. Ron Gardner. He goes around reviewing Buddhist texts mocking people who don’t agree with him. He’s a big fan of Adi Da too and AYN RAND. I’m fucking serious. On his blog you can find some pretty annoying right-wing views also.
He published a book named “Electrical Christianity” which is a weird mix of Dzogchen, Esoteric Christianity, and other crap. It’s eclectic to the point you think he’s just having fun with theoretical concepts.
Anyways, here’s an example of his debate style:
“I say I’m an unsurpassed expert in mysticism. I’ve been studying, practicing, and teaching the stuff for over forty years. I’m also an em-Powered yogi, channeling heavy-duty Shakti and regularly resting in Suchness, as the Heart.”
“You, my friend, to clear your confusion, need to read Ayn Rand’s “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.”
“Avgsvstv, Rand got me clear on the continuum of sensation, perception, and cognition, and how knowledge can be validated. None of the Buddhist epistemology I’ve read is on her level.”
Ayn Rand + Adi Da = great relationship
His obsession with Adi Da is kind of disturbing. But I just felt like joining this gossip and releasing my inner “female shakti” or some shit.
Ignoramus Maximus releasing electric diarrhea through the mouth.
Brad wrote, “I’d rather sit around watching Thundarr the Barbarian instead of pouring my energy into lots of complex interpersonal negotiations.”
I think that’s telling, and cuts to the heart of the question of how ‘spiritual’ institutions get formed and maintained, and how they can go wrong.
Rules of behaviour for spiritual or monastic style groups (I think) come about as an attempt to simplify life: to leave more time for people to follow their bliss – whether that’s smelling the roses, communing with the divine, seeing the nature of reality, watching Thundarr, or whatever. The guys who wrote the Vinaya Pitaka, or the Rule of St. Benedict, were probably pretty chilled – and just wanted to give their colleagues more space and freedom for growth.
Then money, buildings, and officialdom come along, and some of the longer term members have to sacrifice some of their own bliss to run the thing, and leave space for the newcomers to bliss out (or see through their bliss-urge, whatever).
Then the elders who run the thing get treated as important, and act up to the treatment. Then you get financial and sex scandals, and hollow institutions that exist just to maintain themselves, and people entering the community as a career choice.
In the West, we kind of see through this – and we place a lot weight on ideas like democracy, equality, and individuality. And we see the hierarchies and dogmas of traditional religions as backward relics of the feudal age. So we look for alternatives. Problem is, if you make the thing too much of a participatory democracy, it turns into a talking shop, and there ends up being more politics than practice. If one person is the ‘leader’ and that’s that, at best the whole thing becomes just a chore for him or her, so why bother – except to take what they can get in the form of sex, cash or adulation – why bother, when you just wanted to watch Thundarr (or sit zazen) in the first place. If you run the thing via a committee of longstanding members, seniority can be become more important than quality of practice: and the senior members will form a clique that protects its power against upstarts. And so it goes, so on and so forth, in various permutations.
I don’t have an answer either, but it’s encouraging that Brad cares about this stuff. The burning question for religious communities was always to find a way to live in harmony without dropping freedom and authenticity. Who knows, if Brad keeps his eye on the ball through this, he might help come up with something that works in today’s world.
“In fact, even each sense may be acting independently of other senses.”
It’s a relief.
“When old Master Chien-hou taught people, he always quoted the Classics: ‘The feet, legs, and waist must act together simultaneously.’ He also quoted the line, ‘It is rooted in the feet, relaxed through the legs, controlled by the waist, and manifested through the fingers,’ which likewise means that the hands must only follow and must not move by themselves.”
(Cheng Tzu’s Thirteen Chapters on T’ai Chi Chuan”, Cheng Man Ch’ing, trans. by Benjamin Pang Jeng Lo and Martin Inn, pg 105)
Oh!
That’s a little easier.
ichabod801 wrote:
“You should really look at how the Quakers organize”
Actually, it looks more like anarchy. I offset a bit a friend in November, when I told him that, to me, real anarchy is not what it’s usually said: no rules and therefore, the law of the strongest. Real anarchy is cooperation. Mutual insurance, agricultural or manufactural cooperation, are “let’s organise among ourselves, before someone comes and “organises” us.”
It is a real solution.
But when you people say “in the West, any organisation will become commercial, no that’s the anglosaxon world. In France, a country extremely marked by the Great Military Dictatorship, organisation tend to become extremely hierarchical, with everyone attempting to assert him/herself as the little intermediary boss. Not much matter of either sex or money, but sheer hierarchy, for the mere pleasure of it.
That’s a good point Michel
Speaking of history of Zen and its Westernization, this article may be of interest: http://no-sword.jp/blog/2015/03/life_and_times_of_nishiari_bokusan.html
“which likewise means that the hands must only follow and must not move by themselves.”
Those damn hands, always getting people into trouble
make me laugh. Yes, I could have left Cheng’s commentary on Master Chien-hou’s teaching off.
“The Classics say, ‘The mind mobilizes the ch’i and the ch’i mobilizes the body.”
(Ibid, pg 32)
“In general, what the ancients called, ‘straightening the clothes and sitting precariously’, has to do with the work of self-cultivation. …The spine has many joints, just like a string of pearls, rising one on top of the other.”
(“Master Cheng’s Thirteen Chapters on Tai-Chi Ch’uan”, trans. Douglas Wile, pg 21)
So stepping all over the hoe-handle, whose ribs are these, pearly and handy to boot?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAQTuE0eVFI
“Right now I’m working on setting up my own evil empire. I’m trying to start a permanent Zen center in Los Angeles. I think this center will be a good thing, or else I wouldn’t do it. But it has just as much potential to go wrong as any other institution. I keep asking myself; Is it really worth doing?”
***This is your thought on the start up of a Zen Centre?
Very cool. May be it is laughable from a guy like me, but I think you are on the right track!
Very very very cool!
“Then, of course, someone will see in my institution an opportunity for authority and power. At that point it’ll be ripe for someone else to call bullshit on it and try again.”
I love you Bradly :'(
“Right now I’m working on setting up my own evil empire. I’m trying to start a permanent Zen center in Los Angeles.”
I’m confused, I thought this was the idea with Dogen Sangha Los Angeles?
How are the two different?
You gotta understand, Adi Da was here to serve the narcissists of the world. Someone had to do it. And just because you’re a narcissist, doesn’t mean you don’t need the Dharma.
He was also, politically speaking, “further to the right than Ghenghis Khan,” which was just as much fun as it sounds. Ayn Rand was pitiful in his eyes. Gotta set your sights much higher than that.
As with Brad, Da was doing the world a big favor by keeping all those narcissists out of the system. Maybe they’re even a bit better for the experience. I think I am too.
Conrad:
“. The fact that Adidam is purportedly lead by an enlightened being, and that it teaches the way to become enlightened oneself, in no way guarantees that it is free of narcissistic exploitation and conflict. In fact, I would argue that movements that aspire to enlightenment or which make such claims are more likely to have narcissistic issues than groups with more mundane aspirations.
Now, you are right that accusing Adi Da of having NPD is a serious charge. I don’t make it lightly. I don’t even make it out of disrespect, the way one might accuse someone we don’t like of being “psycho”. What I mean is that I don’t see any other way of accurately describing Adi Da’s personality issues, or of explaining the peculiar dynamics of his relationships, his organization, and his spiritual legacy.”
Beautiful stuff, Conrad.
So what happens when someone with a personality disorder, or a biochemical disorder ” drops their body-mind”, and attracts a following?
Well, then we get what Freud called “narcissistic license”. People often suppress their own narcissism, waiting for the chance to let loose with it, but they are too afraid and timid and don’t feel comfortable letting it out. When the charismatic narcissist comes along and broadcasts his narcissism for all to see, for some people that acts as the licence they’ve been looking for to act it out themselves. Which is why people are attracted to narcissistic cult leaders and join up. They are finally getting the chance to let it all hang out at last. Rock stars serve the same purpose. Punk rockers included. And even punk rockers who become spiritual teachers. There are all sorts of flavors to narcissism, not just Adi Da’s version of it. Religion and spirituality is there to serve almost every kind of narcissism you could imagine. The authority of God and scripture is used as another form of license to play out these games. It’s what many traditions are all about.
Could that be coming into play in this comments section?
In your case, yes.
Rock on Dad!
Grrrrr! ヽ(ï½`çš¿”²ï½)ﾉ
This flamin’ internet thingymajig is nearly as bad for ego-preservation as the dharmadhatu: not a single thing can be concealed!
I’ve had to ditch my cute little kanji avatar. My zen sangha started an online forum, and the same avatar showed up there. Only a matter of time before somebody reads my outré sarcastic comments on this blog… and I go from being class clown of the zendo to public enemy number one! (if not already)
Religion, it’s a good thing
… such a shame it lost its normalcy enforcement job to robots
How To Start A Zen Center, by Margaret Thaler Singer
The lesson of Zen history is thus: if Brad wants to jumpstart this project, he needs to do something really weird.
Maybe go find a hut (or even better, a cave) in the desert or mountains, and mysteriously disappear to it, to watch thundarr box sets, and the full back catalog of Monkey!
Go completely off grid for a few months, then start to drip feed rumours of his own whereabouts to the Internet. Needy seekers will start to turn up at the cave, begging for dharma. He should unload a shotgun in their general direction, and refuse to come out until he sees red snow, or something equally preposterous, like a poor spiritual teacher. He’ll be a cause celebre when he returns to the city – a couple of years later, or whenever the doritos run out – finally relenting to his devotees’ clamor for a practice center.
I give this unsolicited wise advice free and gratis, it’s worth more than any crude monetary donation.
HOW TO MEDITATE
— lights out —
fall, hands a-clasped, into instantaneous
ecstasy like a shot of heroin or morphine,
the gland inside of my brain discharging
the good glad fluid (Holy Fluid) as
I hap-down and hold all my body parts
down to a deadstop trance — Healing
all my sicknesses — erasing all — not
even the shred of a “I-hope-you” or a
Loony Balloon left in it, but the mind
blank, serene, thoughtless. When a thought
comes a-springing from afar with its held-
forth figure of image, you spoof it out,
you spuff it out, you fake it, and
it fades, and thought never comes — and
with joy you realize for the first time
“Thinking’s just like not thinking —
So I don’t have to think
any
more” -Jack Kerouac
I saw the following quote the other day, you hear something like this from time to time usually from people who meditate, or who are thoughtful about meditating…
“We get quiet for a moment in meditation. We sink down to a relaxedness, a calmness, abruptly free from all the crazy dreams we confuse with reality. And in that instant, by mistake maybe, or because we aren’t thinking to stop it from happening–we experience, in a flash, things as they really are.”
– William R. Stimson
But aren’t things “as they really are” always as they really are? Aren’t the “crazy dreams” reality, too? Isn’t everything, just the way it is, the way it appears, perfect, already realized “as it is”?
It’s all done, nothing else to do.
Are the crazy dreams reality too? The suchness of what is, is not the appearance that a conditioned mind imposes upon it.
The crazy dreams of duality are not just the way it is. If they were, there would not have to be a multitude of meditative techniques. There would not have to be discussion of just sitting, or this blog, or sutras.
If it was all perfect, why would the Buddha prescribe certain actions for going about your business.
Logic will never catch that one, Dad 🙁
The bridge is flowing, the water is still.
How’s that, better?
Perfect!
How To Start A Zen Center, by Mukunda Goswami
“All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.” -Blaise Pascal
Yes, it’s all perfect – even the dieing, and the rotting to the formless core. Even a man/woman born and dieing in delusion is perfect.
Thinking non-thinking there is neither being born nor dieing. That too is perfect.
Yes, even my trolling you Dad 🙂
Good trolling, son. It’s all perfect
“All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”
I wonder what Jusan would say to that
Talk about recursive bullshit, iterating into shit over and over again. That shit is always self-similar too with just a bunch of nonsensical words thrown around like, “Thinking non-thinking there is neither being born nor dieing. That too is perfect.”
When will you guys get real? This is like fractal of crap. Feedback looping into more and more crap and oscillating between extreme and bearable fakeness.
It’s like a fluid that’s become a crystalline shit pellet, forever lost in the tidal waves of time.
Mumbles, you should get outside more, insteading of reading on “HOW TO MEDITATE”, so you can learn become a bit more real.
“But aren’t things “as they really are” always as they really are? Aren’t the “crazy dreams” reality, too? Isn’t everything, just the way it is, the way it appears, perfect, already realized “as it is”?”
I for one will not fall for the recursive trap in such questions that do not come from sincerity but just half-assed intellectualization.
typos: instead*
like a*
This comments section is like the Youtube video “Too Many Cooks”.
It’s like a coma of babble that leads nowhere, but then again, that “coma of babble that leads nowhere” is the foundation of this pathetic civilization.
“Talk about recursive bullshit, iterating into shit over and over again. That shit is always self-similar too with just a bunch of nonsensical words thrown around like, “Thinking non-thinking there is neither being born nor dieing. That too is perfect.”
Just because you haven’t done the work to understand this, doesn’t mean you should have a shit fit.
“I for one will not fall for the recursive trap in such questions that do not come from sincerity but just half-assed intellectualization.”
That’s your problem, trying to understand it with your intellect. The process itself is half-assing.
…a perfect shit fit, however. I mean, really well executed!
Mumbles is speaking from non-attachment. When you get there you will understand.
Until then you are trolling with your intellect.
Fred, I know for certain Mumbles is not talking from experience. This is a man who implied “being remembered by civilization is a great goal”! This is his method of supporting scoundrels like Houellebecq, who support sex tourism as a remedy to the West’s problems.
The Buddhist, however, doesn’t care, for to them “losing is satori, winning is illusion” (Kodo Sawaki).
I have gone to many Zazenkais and still frequently sit in Shikantaza, but you cannot express Buddhist truths for rigid crystalline structures like philosophical rhetoric or quoting Dogen’s terminology left and right. Even my obsession over the Hard Problem was delusion, but the point is you have to be your own person. You have to actualize your own fluid understanding through some artistic, spontaneous means that is not forced or contrived.
The fact is, you keep regurgitating everything Dogen and Brad Warner says, Fred. You cannot speak from your own experience because you are afraid of being alone, of solitude. Frequent solitude in natural scenery is needed for this practice and not superimposing the face of your idols onto your own.
“As a hand that lets go of the wilted flower.
Glistening petals flying to the bright moon.”
typo : in rigid*
“…but the point is you have to be your own person.” – Subdural Hematoma
100% wrong.
The point is to experience and realize that there is no person. There never was a person.
There may be the appearance of a person, but it is just an appearance due to conditions; like a rainbow or a mirage.
It is conditioned phenomena all the way down.
That no-one, not the same as nothing, must actualize the unity of his contemplation and wisdom through a creative craft of some sort. Otherwise, it is in imitation of other “greats”. The poetry of masters like Stonehouse and Han Shan was written by the Infinite and of the Infinite. No-one wrote them, but they still came from a resounding original voice that is of Infinite. That voice is not a babble.
Walking.
Standing.
Sitting.
Lying down.
Cooking rice.
Drinking tea.
Are these “creative crafts”?
Are they just “imitating the Masters”?
“The Infinite” by any other name would still stink like shit.
Imitating
is what
I do best cuz
I don’t like standing alone
without support
chirp chirp
dogen dogen
chirp chirp
suck suck Brad’s dick
“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”- the four truths are the practice of Zen Buddhism, on some level, to me.
A necessary corollary to “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”: if I go down in chaotic fractal regression in the comment thread, it would be my own fault:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6RnpNlgTTo
Swimming on dry land takes a little getting used to, for sure, especially when the whole world turns out to be sea.
Brad, one thing some Christian churches do is that the preacher is not allowed to handle money or any administrative issues.
The minister, salaried or not, is not in charge of the center.
By paying the administrators and not the teacher, the administrators merely maintain the charter of the organization with NO teaching authority, but have criteria for what a qualified teacher is supposed to have regarding credentials.
Think of it like a live theater that doesn’t hire directors except on a production basis or on a monthly stipend.
So when the mojo goes to his/her head, they get dumped and the admins find another teacher in line with the criteria of the charter.
Then it’s just the politics of ego – the mojo of the admins running 24/7.
What Katageek just wrote fits exactly with what I have been thinking for years.
How To Start A Zen Center, by Jeff Guinn
“The fact is, you keep regurgitating everything Dogen and Brad Warner says, Fred. You cannot speak from your own experience because you are afraid of being alone, of solitude. Frequent solitude in natural scenery is needed for this practice and not superimposing the face of your idols onto your own.”
I am alone just like you, and in my 20’s experienced what you experience. All that wanes over time.
Real solitude is dropping the voices in your head.
When the voices in the head are dropped, then real creativity can actualize, hence why many Chinese brush painters would meditate in front of trees before painting. Their minds are quiescent to the point of no babble, and then a real fluid inspiration can flow in.
Such spontaneous creative expressions are of the Infinite. Such artwork, koans, or poetry arealigned , of and the actuality of absolute reality.
That is what I mean by “be your own no-one”. You must actualize and manifest your own satori in some kind of means, and not just repeat its significance in a mechanical, terse kind of way. It must come from a true apprehension and fluidity.
“…be your own no-one.”
“Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today,
Oh, how I wish he’d go away.”
“Last night I babbled about what is or isn’t while looking up the stairs
wishing for a little man to lend out his hand
too scared to go up when he’s not there
Oh, how I wish I could speak from my own experience”
may be this book, would be better in conjunction with what you already know about zen.
http://www.amazon.ca/The-Long-Discourses-Buddha-Translation/dp/0861711033
the basement to the house.
I tried. I give up. Again.
What terrible music… I was listening to Nine Inch Nails when I was 17. Grow the fuck up and listen to some real black metal or something:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXQDouZZUt4
I guess Ufaz stopped posting here. And the Saggy Helicopter has returned.
Coincidence? One might wonder…
Cheers.
“I guess Ufaz stopped posting here”
He’s on troll vacation
Sammy’s filling in for him.
SamsaricHelicoid’s peace is readily disrupted. That much is apparently true.
I’m not a troll.
Bravo, Alan Sailer: you appear to have invoked Ufaz.