85 Questions from "The Nature of Existence"

My friend Rob recently told me about a film project called The Nature of Existence. A fellow went around the world asking eighty five "big questions" to various folks; religious leaders, folks on the religious fringe, philosophers, scientists, artists, regular folks. It looks like a really neat film. How he didn't get around to asking me the questions, I can't imagine. To correct this glaring omission, I decided to answer all the questions myself. In fact, if you read this post, you probably don't have to watch the movie.

I'm kidding, of course. What struck me about the questions is that they all raise issues that I've looked into at least a little bit in the fourteen years since I started taking an interest in my religious life. I bet if you're reading this blog, you've probably put some thought into these questions, too.

If you had asked me these same questions when I was eighteen, my answers would have been really different, and probably a little insane. If you had asked me these questions just two or three years ago, my answers would have been different than they are now. I'm putting a note on my Google calendar for two years from today to answer these questions again. My plan is to answer the questions without reading the answers I've typed out here, and then compare them. If you'd like, you can join me in this endeavor. I'd suggest answering the questions yourself before reading my answers (if you feel like reading my answers at all, that is). Also, I suspect that my answers to these questions would be different even just a few months from now; some answers might change completely, and other answers would emphasize different themes.

Some folks might say that the radical changes in my answers over the past fourteen years is an indication of my lack of direction, my lack of commitment, my lack of true understanding, or even my depravity. They may be right, though I doubt it. In my view, I'm just doing the best I can.

Reading through my answers, I doubt that these would be considered "orthodox Buddhist" answers (whatever that might mean), and I'm ok with that. Anyway, I don't pretend that these answers are authoritative.

Up next on the The Big Old Oak Tree... THE PRECEPTS ARE SUBVERSIVE.

Without further ado, here's what I think about a bunch of stuff...

What I Got Out of Zen Practice

Hello again, everyone! I'm sure you've all noticed the lack of blogular activities from your favorite, go-to website for Zen practice and spirituality. I've just not been feeling particularly creative in this part of my life. I'm still engaged with the practice, but I've just not been thinking about it in ways that are well-suited for me to write stuff. This post will be about myself, mostly... so I'm sure you'll find it utterly fascinating.

 Odilon Redon (1840-1916), Buddha, Musee d'Orsay

Recently a fellow I know on Facebook, Brian, posted the following:

so... i've been placed on several, spiritual and zen/buddhist "closed groups" here on facebook which is fine. Yet most of the comments seem like they are from beginning students.
how many of my friends have practiced over five years ?

Brian maintains the always-entertaining blog, Fuke: a new alliance of Dharma artists.

A bunch of folks responded. The conversation turned to questions of whether or not it matters how long one has been practicing, and what lengthy practice actually leads to anyway. My favorite comment was from Robert:

i've been practising being an idiot for 55 years 

Keep at it, Robert! Be the best, full-on idiot you can be!

I counted up my years of Zen practice. Let's see, I got started in January of 2004 in Pittsburgh, and really took to it right from the start... Wait, was that 2004? When did I move to Tassajara? April of 2004. Yeah, so it was January of 2004. So 2004 to 2005 was one year... [counting on my fingers] 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. [I find it hard to math in my head sometimes.] Wow. Seven years? Is that right?! I counted again, and it is indeed right.

Seven years! I've been feeling my age lately. I hung out with a young lady recently who was a senior in high school when 9/11 happened. I was like, HEY! How old are you!? I was in grad school on 9/11! and she was all, I'm 27! September 11th was like 10 years ago! and then I was like, Wait... What year is this? Weird, huh? (We're going to see a performance of 12th century choral music from Notre Dame Cathedral this Saturday. Now that is old!)

Seven years! Not such a long time, but nor is it a short time when you're only thirty one years old, is it? Seven years. Given the major change in the form of my practice since November, and the fact that we humans tend to reflect on the course of our lives during transitional periods, I think it's appropriate that I've been reflecting on what I got out of these years of practice.

My response to Brian's question on Facebook: 

I HAVE SEVEN YEARS OF PRACTICE UNDER MY BELT. Booyah. Most of it pretty intensely, living at temples and whatnot. Currently, I meditate kind of when I feel like it, and I read some teachings, though most of what I read isn't Buddhist stuff. I still feel very engaged with and committed to the practice, and I can say with some confidence that my Zen practice has given me everything I will ever need to be content. Booyah, once again.

There's a sense in Zen circles that one shouldn't talk about what one gets out of Zen practice. Also, there's a sense that the only really correct answer is that you don't get anything out of it. Sometimes folks can get kind of cute about it; "I've been practicing for thirty years, and I have nothing to show for it," says the respected teacher. Yeah, right...

Max: How has your zazen changed since you started practicing?
Sojun Roshi: It's the same. Just deeper.

Now that's more like it...

Dogen cites an old Chinese story about a general who "subdued the enemies of the court," and was then offered a reward. The general refused, saying he was just doing his job. Dogen comments,

Even in secular society, those who are wise carry out their tasks solely for the sake of fulfilling their roles. They do not expect any reward. Students of the Way must have the same mental attitude. Once you have entered the Buddha-Way, you should practice the various activities just for the sake of the buddha-dharma. Do not think of gaining something in reward. (Shobogenzo Zuimonki, 1-9)

I think we need to remember that this instruction is directed towards those who are already committed to the Buddha Way. Those who are committed to the Buddha Way are no longer committed to themselves; this is called renunciation. Instead, there's a commitment to venerating the Buddha, unfolding the Dharma, and serving the Sangha. Of course, we practice wholeheartedly and strive to live an awakened life, but the teaching is that you don't do this for some reward; you do the practice because that's what a Buddha does!

That said, we can still often point to some change in our lives. Let's get real: practice is transformative, Zen's "no-gaining mind" notwithstanding. In fact, I'd say that if you've been practicing for a while and you and/or others don't see some kind of effect, even if it's just a small effect, then you might want to take a serious look at what you're doing.

My teacher once gave a talk about his Dharma transmission ceremony, and he described how his teacher gave him everything he would ever need for the rest of life, including a brown kesa and some ritual implements. I think I know what he means. I really do think I have everything I need to be content and to live a meaningful life. There's still stuff I want, including a decent career, a woman to settle down with, etc.. And I want the world to be somewhat different than it is (mainly, an end to ecological destruction).

The difference about how it was before practice and how it is now after practice is that I know that none of these things will make my life complete. Before, I really did believe that a satisfying romantic life, for instance, would complete me. I still want a satisfying romantic life, mind you, but now I want it because I would just plain enjoy it, for various reasons. I've learned that enough about who I am and how my mind works - how our minds work - to know that seeking for happiness outside ourselves is a recipe for a frantic and miserable life. (There's other "stuff" that "I" have "gotten" out of practice, but this is what I want to focus on here.)

Now, it could be that this is just the result of growing up a bit over the course of seven years. In fact, it bothers me a little bit that I can't ever know for certain whether the changes that I've noticed over these seven years of practice are the result of the practice or the result of just growing up. It's a purely hypothetical question, and therefore kind of irrelevant, but would I be just as content - or perhaps more content - if I had just done normal stuff over the years? What if I just worked a good job, bought a house, got married, and had kids?

"I never ask hypothetical questions; it's like lying to your brain!"
(Kenneth, on 30 Rock)

There's still work to do, however! I know that there is nothing that can make my life complete, that it is complete as it is, that the infinite universe stands always before my very eyes, that my mind contains the whole universe, that I am the way, the truth, and the life. But greed, hate, and delusion sneak in all the time. I still need to go deeper.

Strive on heedfully, my friends!

(If you want to have your mind blown, read these books one after another: The Web of Life, Fritjof Capra. Radical Nature, Christian de Quincy. What We Leave Behind, Derrick Jensen. A Natural History of The Senses, Diane Ackerman. The Spell of The Sensuous, David Abram. Up next, Collapse, by Jared Diamond, and soon enough I well get around to the voluminous Philosophy in The Flesh, by Lakoff & Johnson.)


Current soundtrack: Hank 3 & His Damn Band.

Our religion is what we do.

Native basketry, at the Heard Museum (Phoenix, AZ). Isn't it great?

I'm reading another book by my favorite author Derrick Jensen. This one is called What We Leave Behind, and it's about, well, what we leave behind. As is usual for Mr. Jensen's work, it's a devastating critique of our culture's treatment of the natural world, on which all of life depends. What We Leave Behind focuses on our culture's waste products. Until fairly recently in the history of the planet, the waste of one living thing became the food of another living thing; a tree drops its leaves and the dead leaves are broken down by various processes and living creatures to become the nutrient-rich forest floor, a lion kills a gazelle and the scraps are eaten by hyenas, a human shits in the woods and the shit is eaten by slugs, a human dies and the body is returned to the earth's natural processes, and all life is better off for it - "healthier, stronger, more resilient, more diverse." Not too long ago, however, we started producing waste products that no living thing can break down, which means they are essentially poisonous. Sea creatures starve to death with their bellies full of plastic. Jensen writes, "This culture is killing the planet. This culture is killing the planet. This culture is killing the planet." Sometimes folks get down on Jensen because he is "negative," or "angry." I, however, find him to be realistic, honest, inspiring, caring, and heart-opening. Jensen is not negative; the culture that he is criticizing is negative. Jensen is angry, as he admits, but not in any way that I find objectionable.

One of the reasons I enjoy Jensen so much is because of the wide variety of extensively-noted sources he uses, everything from US (De)Forestry Service policies to biological studies to literature. For the purposes of the The Big Old Oak Tree, I thought this was particularly interesting, quoting the Powhatan-Renape-Lenape man Jack Forbes:

The life of Native American peoples revolves around the concept of sacredness, beauty, power, and relatedness of all forms of existence. In short the "ethics" or moral values of Native people are part and parcel of their cosmology or total world view. Most Native languages have no word for "religion" and it may be true that a word for religion is never needed until a people no longer have "religion." As Ohiyesa (Charles Eastman) said, "Every act of his [the Indian's] life is, in a very real sense, a religious act."... "Religion," is, in reality, "living." Our "religion" is not what we profess, or what we say, or what we proclaim; our "religion" is what we do, what we desires, what we seek, what we dream about, what we fantasize, what we think - all of these things - twenty-four hours a day. One's religion, then, is one's life, not merely the ideal life but the life as it is actually lives.... Religion is not a prayer, it is not a church, it is not "theistic," it is not "atheistic," it has little to do with what white people call "religion" It is our every act. If we tromp on a bug, that is our religion. If we experiment on living animal, that is our religion: if we cheat at cards, that is our religion; if we dream of being famous, that is our religion; if we gossip maliciously, that is our religion; if we are rude and aggressive, that is our religion. All that we do, and are, is our religion. (pg. 154)

What would it look like if I did my best to make everything I do an expression of the "sacredness, beauty, power, and relatedness of all forms of existence"?

Update, 3/9/11: I failed to mention that Jensen shares authorship with Aric McBay, creator of In the Wake: A Collective Manual-in-progress for Outliving Civilization. My apologies.

Sidewalk Beer

My friend Koji and I were stopped at a red light this evening. A homeless-looking fellow was walking down the sidewalk. He had a big beard, and his clothes were torn and dirty. I thought he might have recently been at the psych hospital, where I work, but when I took a second looks I could tell he wasn't the guy I was thinking of. Sitting next to a telephone poll, there was an abandoned tall-boy in a paper bag. The homeless fellow saw it sitting there. He bent down, picked it up, gave a it a shake (to see if there was beer in it, we presumed), and then continued walking carrying the beer. I asked Koji, "Did you see that?" "Yeah," he said, "Quit a night." "That's rough," I said, "There are a lot of different ways to live..." We watched the fellow walk down the street to the corner, where he tossed the can into a trash can! Do you get it? He saw the can, picked it up, and shook it. Koji and I assumed that he shook it, found that there was some beer left in it, and then walked on with his drink in hand. As it turns out, we think, he picked up the can, found it to be empty, and then decided, "Oh well, I've got it in my hand, guess I better take responsibility for it."

Pieter Bruegel (1525-1569), The Peasent Dance

This reminds me of Issan Tom Dorsey. He was a very colorful fellow who, after years as a drag performer and pretty serious druggie, found his way to Suzuki Roshi and San Francisco Zen Center, eventually becoming the abbot of Hartford Street Zen Center. You can read his biography Street Zen, if you'd like. When he first got started in Zen practice, he got into this kick of cleaning things. While his hippy house mates at his hippy commune house were out during the day, he would clean the place up, even arranging their sock drawers. One day, he was walking down the street and he found a candy wrapper. He picked it up in a kind of spontaneous manner, and thought to himself, "Does this mean I am responsible for everything?" The way he tells it, he tried to convince himself that it wasn't true, that actually he was not responsible for everything, but deep down he knew that indeed he is. Then he got on a kick about picking up litter on the street.

Wearing the Robe

Shohei's kesa, from his blog, Robe!

In the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, there is a particular veneration of the kesa, the Buddhist robe. As far as I know, all the different orders of Buddhist clergy wear some form of the kesa. Although there are various styles, they're all worn over the left shoulder, and they are sewn in a distinctive patchwork style. In some schools, the robe is just kind of the way a monk dresses, but in the Soto school, there is a distinct veneration of the kesa. I remember seeing a Tibetan monk whip off his kesa, ball it up, and toss it on a shelf! You'd never see a Soto priest do that. (I don't mean that as a criticism, by the way; it's just an illustration of differing approaches to the kesa.) In my school, we chant a verse three times before we put on the kesa:

Great robe of liberation,
Field far beyond form and emptiness,
Wearing the Tathagatha's teaching,
Saving all beings.

Except when we forget to say it. Like I do, sometimes. My guess is that it's called the "robe of liberation," because it's an expression of renunciation. But what is the wearer supposedly liberated from? Greed, hate, and delusion; the expressions of our limited sense of self. Traditionally, the wearer would be a monastic, which means that he/she would be quite literally free from "worldly concerns," having given up pretty much everything (money, sex, work, property, etc.) in order to pursue the practice of liberation. I'm not sure what the "field beyond form and emptiness" means. Perhaps it's an allusion to our true nature? Not bounded by anything, the emptiness of form, the emptiness of emptiness. My favorite line, the line that I've always found most touching is, "wearing the Tathagatha's teaching." (Tathagatha is one of the epithets for the Buddha.) Wrapping myself in the Dharma, the teaching of the Buddha, the possibility and reality of awakening. It's very warm, the kesa. "Saving all beings," liberating others, helping others to awaken, living an awakened life so that others may be awakened. It means a lot, the robe. In fact, the Soto Zen Buddhist Association, a kind of professional organization for priests, even lists wearing the kesa as one of the jobs of a priest. There's a sense of that one is obligated to wear it. You're a priest? OK; one of the things you do is wear the kesa.

As for me, I've not been wearing mine much. In fact, I think I've worn it only once since I left the the Zen center in November, when I went to a big ceremony. I've been over there for zazen a few times, but I just opted to wear my rakasu (a kind of mini-kesa that I can wear over my street clothes), and when I meditate here in my room I wear the rakasu, too.

It's humbling for me to wear this robe, the same garment worn by the Buddha, Tozan, Dogen, Suzuki Roshi, my teacher. Who am I to take a place in this line? I just do the best I can. I screw up left and right, and my practice is not particularly developed or profound. I at least hope it's sincere. I think it is. This feeling has been particularly pronounced as I step into this new stage of my life, working a normal (secular) job and living at a normal place (not a temple).

Hmmm... I feel very blessed.

---
A very nice man in Alaska, Carl, got in touch with me and asked me about the robe verse a while ago. I told him I would write my thoughts about it here on the blog, then I forgot and didn't do it, and then he emailed me with a gentle reminder of what I said I would do. Thanks, Carl!

I got a job!

I got a job! As you may know, I've been working on an as-needed basis at the psychiatric hospital, as a mental health technician, but I just got hired for full-time work. The schedule is exactly what I wanted, Monday through Friday, 7am to 3pm, leaving me nights and weekends (and a good chunk of the afternoons) to pursue other stuff. While it's not what I want to do for the rest of my life, I find the work engaging and occasionally rewarding. And I don't know what I want to do for the rest of my life anyway. This is great news for me. Quite a relief. I'm very grateful to my employer. I'm going out with a friend to celebrate a bit this evening.

One of Blake's illustrations for the Book of Job. Get it? Job?! Ha!

Live a Little More

I went to a bit of a party last night. My friend Matt, who I know from the Austin Zen Center, is in several bands. One of them, The Black, is going on tour for two months or so, leaving today, so it was a bit of a send-off party. Matt lives in this really cool house that used to be a childcare center; it has a playground in the yard and everything. I didn't know anyone at the party, but I chatted with some folks. A few people wanted to hear all about my job. I guess there is something kind of interesting about working with the seriously mentally ill. I ran into a young fellow I had met a while ago at this place called Wake Up Austin, a house with a bunch of young folks practicing together. We had also run into each other at AZC. Our conversation went something like this,

"Are you still at the Zen center?"
"Oh, no. I moved out. Doing some other things now."
"That's good."
"You think so? Why's that?"
"You get to live a little more." (I'm actually having trouble remembering exactly what he said, but it was something like that, I know.)

Sam Francis

I've run into this before. Folks think that some lifestyles are more... more something... more lifelike? It's like when you're in college, and someone says something about graduating and being in "the real world," or someone has a job, but it's not a "real job." Or you leave a monastery/temple and enter "real life."

Let me assure you, my friends; It doesn't get any more real than this. Life never stops, no matter what you're doing. You can't get away, and it's not ever going to be more real than this.

Merle Haggard sings,

I've been runnin' from life
I keep runnin' from life
Hey, I'm still runnin' from life
But I can't get away


As for the practice, the task is the same, no matter the situation. 


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I'm a little disappointed in The Big Old Oak Tree these days. I feel like I'm not really touching on anything important, and I don't feel like my writing is all that great. I'm not sure where this project is headed.