A Ride to Chicago

For Laurie Cumbo. Thanks again for being part of the great teamwork last winter!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was twenty-one. I had spent the winter in East Lansing, Michigan, after leaving my wife and baby daughter. My very talented but ne'er-do-well friend Matt had escaped from a situation in Chicago where people were after him, and hid in East Lansing among the college freaks for a while. I hankered to go to Chi-town after a winter of grief over my break with my family, with lots of promiscuous sex, grass, LSD, mescaline, MDA, MMDA, DMMDA – I was quality control for an underground chemist – drinking, and being a minister to a bunch of hippies that wanted to try being a Gnostic parish. I loved East Lansing, but there was no real future for me there. I had attended a service in a Zen Temple in Chicago and my intuition was that I could find my salvation through the discipline of Zen sitting. Also, my wife had moved back there, and I wanted to see if I could repair the family. Matt wanted to go back to Chi, also, so we took off by thumb early in April.

Now Matt was a right unusual fellow. He was a few years older than myself. He was about six inches shorter than my six-foot-oh, but stocky, and he could fight. Been in jail a few times, and he could take care of himself. Touch of red to his brown hair. Used to be a child evangelist, till he saw too much hypocrisy amongst the other preachers and turned against his faith. He took revenge on the hypocrisy of his former Christian colleagues by making parodies of hymns so filthy and blasphemous even hippies blushed. He was finding a rebirth of faith amongst the hippies of those days, who preached wide-open possibilities of spirit that could include a Gnostic view of the Gospel, Zen, Astrology, and Drugs. Matt could sing and play guitar; he preferred the country style of the Tennessean immigrants to Yakima, Washington, that were his kin, but he could do Beatles and Blues and the folky stuff going around the cities and campuses. And he could turn on the preaching he used to do, all the way to talking in tongues and laying on of hands, dancing around with a guitar, until the most anti-religious of the commie freaks amongst us got up and started testifying! Even so, he had a criminal streak, and sometimes counter-culture nests of wayward individuals depended much on his shoplifting skills for food. But by his wit – oh, and could he do the Dozens! – and his Appalachian gap-toothed smile and his innate charm, people tended to like him. By the time I had met him, he had lost the casual racism of his childhood from hanging around with Blacks and Indians in the bohemian underground of Chicago. But he had crossed a Native woman in some kind of deal, and the word was she was out to snuff him. After a couple of months of living in students' basements and attics, he decided to try to make peace with her so he could live in town again.

On a day when the snow was all gone, we set out on the road, begging for rides. Before you get to Benton Harbor and swing around the southern end of Lake Michigan, you have wide-open farm country on both sides of Kalamazoo, at least forty-three years ago. Some freeway interchanges had nothing but a gas station. Some even less.

I think it was only around Paw Paw that Matt and I had gotten to by dark. It was an intersection with one gas station, and lots of fields ready for spring planting, stretching out to a horizon broken only by trees lining distant ditches. It was getting late, and it was getting cold. We went up from the freeway to the gas station, and the attendant let us spend a few minutes getting warm inside, every hour or so, as the traffic got less and less. He said he was closing at eleven. As it got closer to that hour, we bitched less about the cold, facing a long uncomfortable night on our feet.

And then a car pulled over just ahead of us on the freeway, and it had Illinois plates! With relief we ran up to it, but the driver got out and went around the front of the car to look at something. He was a smartly dressed, short black man with a fedora, and our hearts sank as we saw that he was looking at a flat tire. His pulling over had nothing to do with us. I hardly ever got picked up by black folks and expected nothing, but Matt was more resourceful than myself. As the man looked sadly at the tire, Matt made him an offer.

"If you got the tools, I can have this here tire off in five minutes! I'll get this tire fixed up at the station up there, if you give me and my friend a lift to Chicago." The man looked us over and said, "Yeah! Less do it!" Matt had the wheel off in half the time he said, and he and the driver went up the ramp to the station.

Meanwhile, I looked inside the car. In the vague light from the gas station sign, I saw three other guys. They weren't very clear, but from what I could make out, they were dudes you never saw unless you went to the innermost of the inner city. This will be a very interesting ride, I thought.

Matt and the driver were walking back down the ramp when the lights at the station went out. Made it just before the station closed! Luck's smiling on us!

Matt bounced the tire near the jack like it was a basketball, and knelt down to slip it onto the bolts of the hub. As he had the tire in both hands, lining up the holes, the driver hovered over his back.

The man asked, “Say, you fellas hear the news?”

“No. What happened?” Matt said, as he shifted the tire a couple of degrees clockwise.

“Martin Luther King got shot.”

Matt froze at those quiet words.

I said to the driver, “White guy?” I knew anyway.

He nodded, "Seems so."

“Did he die?”

He nodded again.

Matt got the tire on and spun the crosswrench five times. And I went underwater into that place where time and space are different for a while.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was not surprised, but I was shocked. Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior, was a moral focus for the two great political passions of my youth: peace and civil rights. I was shocked, but I also felt fear. Fear is magnified by insecurity, and we get really uncomfortable with people of other cultures when it's so much harder to know what's safe or dangerous.

But I was not really thinking thoughts like these. I was trying to grok the situation, and under the stress of potential danger, my mind rhymed its assessment:

treeless fields and barrenment

no place to hide nowhere to run

exemption from resentment:

long hair no guarantee

no one to hear or see

possible gun

four of them, and Matt and me

man, they got you if they want you!

all there is, is a bare word

only innocence can be honored

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

Back in ordinary reality, realizing the situation was out of my control was somewhat comforting. Obviously, refusing the ride would have been insulting, and could precipitate a violence that would not happen otherwise. Matt likely had the same thoughts. A guy with a do-rag got out of the shotgun seat and pulled the seat forward. Another guy got out of the back seat and motioned for Matt to get in. Matt shifted the bulk of the guitar and got in next to a fellow who had not cut the nails on his little fingers likely for a couple of years. I sat in the middle of the front seat. We rode in silence for a while.

The dude sitting next to me, with the do-rag and Little Richard mustache, turned to look at Matt in the dark. He took a drag from a Kool and asked, "You play that thing, or carry it for show?"

Matt took out his finger picks, and removed the cracked Washburn from the case that was little more protective than cardboard. He fussed with the tuning a bit, and began noodling a free-flowing tune. Almost everything he ever strummed idly turned eventually into "Cocaine Blues," the way Dave Van Ronk played it:

Well, I reached into my pocket, grabbed my poke,

Note in my pocket said, "No more coke."

Cocaine!

Run all 'round my brain.

And then it would turn into something else. It was his meditation to get in touch with deeper layers of his psyche, where things like music and religion lived. Getting sucked into the shifting patterns of the notes he was calling up took my mind off our situation, which was awkward at best. The other guys were quiet, presumably also fascinated. The patterns kept shifting, although the beat stayed steady. Maybe he was fishing around in his repertoire for something we'd all like. Shapes formed in the sounds. Spotlights and slinky black women. Matt began to sing:

Set me free, why don't cha babe

Get out my life, why don't cha babe

'Cause you don't really love me

You just keep me hangin' on

You don't really need me

But you keep me hangin' on

Why do you keep a coming around

Playing with my heart?

Why don't you get out of my life

And let me make a new start?

Let me get over you

The way you've gotten over me

I looked at the driver, and he was smiling. The guy with the do-rag was slightly nodding his head. Matt had a good clear voice and expressed the frustrated passion of the Supremes' song very well, building it for the last verse:

Why don't you be a man about it

And set me free

Now you don't care a thing about me

You're just using me

Go on, get out, get out of my life

And let me sleep at night

'Cause you don't really love me

And suddenly all four of the men we were riding with joined in for the last line:

You just keep me hangin' on!

Without a break in the picking, Matt went into "Tears of a Clown," and then "Early Morning Rain," and "Don't Think Twice." After some more noodling around, he went into the spiritual:

Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin' for to carry me home;
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin' for to carry me home.

I looked over Jordan,
And what did I see,
Comin' for to carry me home,
A band of angels comin' after me,
Comin' for to carry me home.

But then he abruptly changed to a faster tempo and switched to "Swing Down Chariot":

Why don't you swing down chariot

Stop and let me ride

Swing down chariot

Stop and let me ride

Rock me Lord, rock me Lord

Calm and easy

I've got a home on the other side

He got the guys to clapping by the end of that. He stopped to get his breath.

"Say, man, where'd you learn to sing spirituals?" So Matt told them he used to be a kid preacher before he ever became a man, though his beliefs had changed considerable since. "Yeah? Do a little preachin' for us."

Matt didn't need encouragement. It looked like he was just picking idly on the old Washburn, but he was collecting his spirit. Back to "Cocaine Blues." Then he began to emphasize a slightly faster bass thump. It got faster until I began to hear the melody form. He had an other-place look, like dreaming of somewhere he'd been to and expected to get to again. Like he knew his fingers were doing something that didn't necessarily really concern him. I felt the energy serpent rise in my own spine to prickle out on my neck. Matt seemed calm but his guitar took command with authority while he looked on it with the paternal interest of a sculptor on his block. He had us -- what was he going to do with that?

He began slow, low, and soft:

Glory,glory! Hallelujah!

When I lay . . . my burden down

He repeated it just a bit stronger:

Glory,glory! Hallelujah!

When I laaay . . . my burden down

Lord, I'm feeling so much better

Since I lay my burden down

Lord, I'm feeling so much better

Since I lay my burden down

All my sickness will be over

When I lay my burden down

All my sickness will be over

When I lay my burden down

All my troubles will be over

When I lay my burden down

All my troubles will be over

When I lay my burden down

Glory,glory! Hallelujah!

When I lay my burden down

By now he was putting it out there so loud it hurt my ears. We were spellbound, clapping and laughing. And then he abruptly stopped singing, but he didn't miss a beat, launching into passionate spiritual speechifying.

"We've got hard times, Lord! We've got some pretty tough times, brothers! The Rich Man is sipping fine whiskey in his house on the hill, while poor old Lazarus is working in his fields to get a little money to buy him some food to live to work another day, to buy a little wine to take the pain from out of his bones for a little while. Old Lazarus done grown old and tired, and if he gets sick and can't work no more, he's got just the mercy of Death to call him back home. And the Rich Man don't even know another good man is gone!"

"Yeah!" "Tell it, man!"

"But I tell you, God is just! The Rich Man likes his wine and his women, he likes his fine cigars. He likes telling judges and congressmen what to do with the rest of us. And most of all, he likes looking down on old Lazarus and feeling so high and mighty, and so much better than the likes of poor old Lazarus, who brings in the olives from the groves for him! Who brings in the grapes of the vinyards for him! Who picks the cotton in the sun for him! Who works in the factories and makes the steel, and who takes the steel and makes the cars, who sells the cars and makes the Rich Man richer, while he bleeds out his life trying to feed his family!

"God is not mocked, brothers! God is patient, yes, a thousand years is but a day to him, hallelujah! But judgment is coming, and it's coming like a mountain falling, and those that have not been kind to least of His, will not know kindness! They will seek to hide in the holes of the earth, and the earth will turn them out! They will dive into the sea, and the sea will spit them out! They will jump into the abyss, and the abyss will deliver them to the feet of the Lord! And they will beg for mercy, and the Lord will ask, 'On whom have ye had mercy? Had ye mercy on those I sent ye?'

"Wherefore need we worry on God's judgment, brothers? Let's us but be true to each other and live in harmony, as Jesus said. Let us share what we got, and help as we can. The rich have their reward now, but God knows how they got it! Let who labor have their earnings, and not be deprived."

And so on for quite a while. When Matt preached, he got red in the face and the veins stood out on his face. I had seen this preaching before, but Matt was especially passionate – he might be a rogue and a petty thief, but he was being sincere – and the dudes were impressed. Now he was losing steam, getting slower and gentler.

"Let us remember those the Lord hath sent with love and thankfulness. Let us remember our brother Martin, who did not shrink from danger, but gave his life for the peace and freedom of all of us. May we live to be worthy of the ransom price!"

He stopped. There really wasn't anything to say so we all just rode together through the darkness of the night, with the dashes marking the lanes whizzing under us. After about a mile, the man with the do-rag and the penciled mustache asked, "Say, you fellas hungry? We got half a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. It's kind of cold, but . . . "

Four in the Morning

For reasons coming clear later in this

post, I have been up and awake for hours already, and it's just
before four in the morning. Most people think of midnight as the
witching hour, but it's really around 4 a.m. that the skin between
our commonplace world, where we dream we are awake, and the world of
the spirits of our dreams, stretches thin and sometimes breaks.

There's a song by Jesse Colin Young on
his first album, Soul of a City Boy, named
"Four in the Morning":

Four in the morning and the water is pouring down

Stove don't work and my baby has just just left town

I'm lying on my back cause there just ain't nothing to drink

Empty bottles on the floor

Dirty dishes in in the sink

Watching a cockroach crawling in an old bean can

He said when your baby left you I bet it's tough to be a man

I had that feeling for years, most of the time, when I was younger.
At first alone, then as a member of a class of misfits.

I lay in bed around 1 a.m., awake
because I had turned in about 3:30 p.m. the previous afternoon. I was
dead tired because I had gone to Worcester, Mass., for an important
ceremony with my sangha – one of our teachers was to enact the
ancient ritual of Dharma Transmission with his
teacher. It was nominally a three-and-a-quarter hour drive, but rush
hour jams in Connecticut slowed me up till I arrived at our new
temple, to which I had never been and was somewhat anxious about
finding, five minutes after the chanting started. In fact, I could
only find standing room in the densely packed temple in some sort of
closet adjacent to the rooms in which the ceremony took place. I
could not see the ritual, but I could clearly hear the voices of Josh
leading most of the chanting, of James, the founder of our little
mahasangha, and George and David, transmitter and transmittee. In the
closet, I put on my rakusu and joined in the chanting of our familiar
liturgy. With eight or so different local sitting groups represented
in the audience, the chanting didn't quite meld perfectly due to the
variations that occur naturally in geographical distribution, be it
so small as just across southern New England. That didn't affect the
spirit of it though. I saw many people I knew when we had tea and
cake afterwards, and felt a warm glow of belonging. But later, when I
had to decide on accepting an invitation to overnight at the home of
one of my dear friends from my own Hank's Sangha, I called my partner
Owlbone to see if see needed me back in the Hudson Valley, and found
out I needed to drive back in the middle of the night.

We had just finished with a retreat at the Retreat Center, and Owlbone had
gotten on the bus to give the driver his money for driving some of
the participants back to the City. She stepped wrong off the bus. An
old knee weakness acted up. On the phone while I was in Worcester,
she told me that she was in pain and the knee was swelling. Since she
would obviously require medical attention in the morning, it was an
easy choice to make to cut my trip to New England short.

So, I returned after midnight, got a few hours sleep, and blear-eyed drove
Owlbone to the urgent-care clinic in Rock Hill after they opened at
eight. Thus, after some other errands, I was able to crash in the
late afternoon. I intended just to sleep for a few hours, but I
didn't wake until after midnight. Nothing like lying in bed awake to
remember things you would rather not.

It was a rough time – a baby daughter, a debilitating motorcycle accident,
gnawing general paranoia abetted by apocalyptic drugs and a
perception of suicidal politics, and a broken marriage. It was Four
in the Morning all the time for a while. I thought Zen would help me
overcome it, and my earnest application of it at a Midwestern temple
gave me hope for finding my bearings. But my leg had not completely
healed, and it needed a bone graft. Back in a cast and facing more
than a year on crutches, again, my Zen was not strong enough to hold
back the downward spiral of drink and depression that lasted almost
two decades.

The memory that came up clearest was a drug-fuzzed moment when I abused
access to drugs at a hospital where I worked. Already, my liver had
suffered from toxic hepatitis when I was inhaling Halothane without
realizing its cumulative toxic effects. The hospital kept my job open
for a month while I was hospitalized at another place, and I repaid
them for their kindness by shooting barbs after hours. The last time
I did was the worst. I ended up in Cook County Jail for the weekend,
and Monday Morning I was fired for leaving a mess in the lab where I
worked that told the tale of my injection of drugs.

I was fucked up. No idea how I could even remember this. But I was so
fucked up, I couldn't even find a vein to put one more shot into my
system. I found that kind of amusing. Somehow the thought arose that
I was so fucked up, I could easily die with any more barbiturate. But
I asked myself if I even cared. I could find that vein, and live or
die as it came. Somehow, from somewhere, came the thought that I
really didn't want to die just yet.

I put the needle down and went out into the night. Outside my apartment
building, a cop saw me weaving on my crutches and asked me if I was
OK. "Sure! I'm fine, officer!" And I promptly fell and
struck my eyebrow on the curb. And so I was arrested for drunk and
disorderly. At the jail, I was so fucked up, I had the respect of all
the ghetto kids, lucky for me, one of the two Caucasians there that
weekend. "Hey, man! Go see the doc for that eye. He'll fix you
up real good!" "Thanks, man, but I'm fucked up enough." "Dig it,"
said the dude, admiringly.

That weekend and the following few days are a mostly unremembered blur,
so it's a blessed mystery how I remember that moment of grace when I
decided to live. There were still decades of alcoholic
self-medication to climb out of, but things got better with time.
When I finally resumed my Zen sitting practice in the eighties, the
pace of improvement picked up.

And now it's just before dawn and I'm going to our meditation room for a
while. Four a.m. brings spirits that are friends of mine, these days.
This was a powerful Moon that peaked yesterday, that hangs low on the
horizon. A Supermoon, they call it. Sure is bright right now, and
perhaps there are subtler effects that caused the profound feelings
at the ceremony, and Owlbone's misstep, and the recurrence of these
memories. But the memories hold no fear for me, and little shame.
Instead, they remind me of the availability of grace in the darkest
of times, whether it comes from somewhere within my own brain or some
angelic dimension. Like the ceremony at Worcester, every moment can
be felt as a coming-home. This is my life in my own universe, after
all, wherein even the demons do the Bosa's work, in disguise.

Blogger and HTML

It's so ungracious to complain about a service one uses for free. But every time I turn around, the automatically generated HTML for paragraphs and other formatting seems to deteriorate. Not just the last post, either -- older posts seem almost unreadable.

Framing is almost as important as content. But no time now to go back and reformat. Hope you can find some value in the words and pictures as they are.

Update: With a change of template, and one changed pref, the formatting seems to have gone back to normal.

We spend trillions to preserve the American Way of Life® for Wall St. CEOs, but we still don't have decent, open-source HTML editors!

Hotei's Belly

The archaic branch of the Internet called "usenet" is still active. Unregulated in many parts, its culture has in quite a few newsgroups acquired a harsh, two-gun etiquette which many anarchistic individuals find amenable. Other groups are noted as being creatively outré. My favorite usenet hangout is alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, a congenial gathering of unusual Buddhists and Buddhsymps that combines both those qualities with a light-hearted benevolence and deeply twisted humor. One of the culturally defining shticks throughout the colorful lifetime of the group has been its response to the still occasionally occurring post protesting its name. Typically, the earnest writer objects that the Buddha (meaning Siddhartha Gautama, the probably historical person who became known as Shakyamuni Buddha) was neither short nor fat. Pouncing on such a post with the gusto of feral cats on a joint of meat dropped from a sloppy butcher's truck, an regular of a.b.s.f.g will loudly announce, "Your Buddha may not be short and fat, but ours certainly is!" The reference is to the Ghost of the Western Plain, the Sage of Sonora . . . El Dupree! — otherwise known as "Him-Whom-One-Must-Not-Stand-Downwind-Of."

It will do a student of philosophy well to search out on the Tubes the enlightening wisdom of the #14 Vinyl Headsack. Yet such an explanation of absfg's name, true as it may be, is but the half of it. As the Ancient Mulroy said in an absfg FAQ, quoted from 1994:

Look, every other day some cherry asks:

"Why is this newsgroup called alt.buddha.short.fat.guy?
The Buddha wasn't short or fat!"

So how come we don't put in the FAQ the following disclaimer:

You're right! He wasn't short or fat. In fact we've NEVER
seen a shakya who was short OR fat! Unless they were
_gravely_ ill.

The point is, that most of the unwashed have the impression
that the rotund, jowly fellow who sits in the lotus-position
in most Chinese restaurants is the Buddha. The group's
name makes as much sport of that impression as it does
anything else.

In fact, if you have an idea of the Buddha, WE'RE MAKING
FUN OF YOU!!! NAA NAA NAAAA NAAAA NAAAAA!!!

Mulroy was speaking of that amply enfleshed Asian figure named Budai, or Pu-tai, in Chinese, more commonly known by his Japanese name of Hotei. Some say he's really Taoist, and not properly Buddhist at all. Some disparage Hotei as merely a folk deity. It doesn't really matter — the gods know what they are. Folk tales come from the deepest parts of a human and bear wisdoms well worth listening to. Whatever his origins, Hotei teaches the same Dharma. Since his image still appears, all over the world, it may be it has something to tell us. Of course, the real teaching is always bigger than words can hold, and words shouldn't be taken too seriously, but if you loosen up their robes a bit, something wonderful may fall out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hotei's most obvious traits are: he is fat, and he is happy. Not just fat, but grossly obese. Not just kind of happy, but laughing to the point of delirium. He deliberately parts his robe to expose his belly where others would cover their flesh for shame. He is happy as he is, unlike those of us with a frustrated desire for imagined improvement. He is happy being exactly as he is. Not despite his corpulence, nor because of it. Since he is not ashamed of himself as he is, he is an emblem of thusness. He opens his robe and exposes what he is, having nothing to hide. Thus he is a symbol of emptiness. In surrendering to complete exposure, he has accepted total vulnerability, and thus become invincible.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is a sidestream to the symbolism of the Cross. Jesus is a man nailed to an instrument of torture and death. He can't move his arms or legs, he can't do a thing about it. He can't escape, and soldiers guard against any possible help. Nothing to do but yield to the inevitable, give up his self, and die. And so he gives his self and his pain and his life to God the Father, and stops his suffering. On the other hand, Hotei exposes his belly and throws away any shame for his body. He embraces in naked honesty this very moment, and he is happy. Although both of these visual stories involve the spiritual value of vulnerability, Hotei's path is joyful. The Crucifix, before the story includes resurrection and redemption, is horrible and tragic. But both mythic nuggets embody a teaching worth contemplating, and the teaching is similar. Lots has already been said about Jesus on the Cross; I haven't seen so much about Hotei.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's no accident that Hotei's Belly is as round as a globe. His good nature is universal. With his arms upraised, he is supporting the universe. Sometimes he points straight up. Is it at the moon? Not a moon you can see by eyes! Hotei often clutches a rosary, even with his face full of mirth. Even in joy, he does not abandon his practice. He doesn't need to practice to realize sukha, but nonetheless he finds sukha in his practice. No anxiety, no dread of pain, no shame, no fear of bad memories, just a joy of living, a joy of pointing
upwards.

And I'm the laughing man
with the load of goodies for all

---"Big High Song for Somebody,"Philip Whalen

At first it was said Hotei lived so simply that he could carry everything he owned in a gunny sack. The story got bigger and so did the sack. It became a magic bag that contains anything one might wish for, but it only gives out that which is truly helpful. Hotei's joy is the perfection of giving -- giving gives him joy, and joy lets him give freely. He has plenty to give because his life is ample. But his life is ample because his bag is Empty, containing No Thing.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The culture that produced the first images of Budai was modest with respect to nudity. Hotei's belly has to suggest all that symbolism of nakedness alone:

My body is naked now and it was born naked. 
No matter how I dress up or undress, I'm naked. 
The hours of the early morning find me naked 
and I find the hours and the morning just as naked as they find me... 
The best and juiciest of humanly truths are our naked truths. 
Our fittest honesty is our naked honesty... 
This is what I call being truthfully democratic.

---Woody Guthrie

Among the many ideas and attitudes we studied and challenged with our own behavior in the Sixties, was the shame of nakedness. When together with friends, we often shed our clothes just like water brothers in Stranger. The psychological result was refreshing -- sexual innuendo and flirting were gone, and so was a layer of armor. Although we still had romances, we had fewer and simpler games between us. We learned that, obviously, shame of one's own nudity and automatic prurient arousal at another's nakedness were learned social conditionings, and not innate in humans at all. In all that time when we were usually naked rather than clothed, we never had orgies . . . well, except that one time . . . . Much later, in 2004, I traveled to California. While attending a Zen service in Santa Rosa with my teacher's teacher, I ran into a friend who had been part of Hank's Sangha in Newton. He was then working at Harbin Hot Springs, and he gave me a free day pass. A former girl friend of mine had lived in a loose community at Harbin in the Seventies, just before the current proprietors evicted them all to create a spa-like spiritual center. As I was on my way from the parking lot to the pools of seismically heated mineral water, I wondered if the anxious, tight-ass social tendencies of recent years had suspended the culture of casual nudity that had always been a tradition there. I saw a sign on the way that reminded people to clothe modestly in sight of the county road, and I smiled. Forty years after our first encounters with naked innocence, and my body was dumpy with age. Practically everyone else there was young, trim, tan, and beautiful. Nothing to do for it but to become Hotei, and laugh at the thought that what others thought of my physical appearance was ever a concern! Thus I played in the buoyant, healing waters, a Silenus amongst the fauns and dryads of young California.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


What do these icons of a laughing fat man say about the Buddhist Way?

Hotei teaches us how to practice: surrender without reservation and stand beyond body! Let go of anxiety and sit in the sky. Go to sleep like a baby with powerful and loving parents. Beg smiling from strangers and give away all you get to other strangers, with a happy snort for their good fortune. Read the flowers and count the stars! Walk home past the last horizon without taking a step!

One can hardly put on arrogance and deception wearing rags, which even the finest robes are already becoming. And when we think on it, deep and steady, again we see the universe, time, this life, all existence, is a really funny joke! It requires more than a giggle, much more than a chortle -- it takes a laugh from somewhere deeper than the gut, that comes rumbling and rolling to trumpet out from the entire body!

For Heaven's sake, relax! We can't see much further than the range of our fears. Though the universe is a scary place, an earthquake or a firing squad isn't likely in our future for the next hour or so, for most of us. So take some ease and reflect on what this is. We might also consider what is is, also what's what.

What is this!? We might have thought it was all so familiar, but when we really begin to look at it, it gets pretty damned strange. The succession of moments might seem like a river of kaleidoscopically related little dancing bits of whirling nothing. Or wide-open spaces defined by what we call matter, but said matter, on closer examination, is pretty much just more empty space bound by other spaces. Or a dream dreamt by a dream that dreams it's a dreamer that dreams it awakens from one dream into another. Whatever the truth of the matter, it's likely to be weirder than anyone's dreams. We anoint some of these dreams as beliefs and then pretend they're facts, yet we still act as if we know what's going on.

A nameless dread has been increasingly gnawing at the human psyche for the past five hundred years or so, as changes through discovery and technology have forced changes in worldview faster than human evolution has enabled us to integrate them. We can deal with the resultant fear in at least three ways.

We can refuse to face it by denying the nature of the changes and avoiding thinking about our fear. Anxiety has always been part of life, but, until recently, we've succeeded in sleeping at night because of various comforters and crutches. But now, given any thoughtfulness, none of them seem convincing enough anymore, not religious doctrine nor other philosophical engines, like science or psychology. Even a little examination of our life and mind will show us that we comforted ourselves with merely the idea of control -- we hung onto our little pretense of knowledge and it felt something like being empowered. We could vigorously deny anything that threatened this illusion of control, even though, every night, we surrendered to our bodies' demand that we enter the chaos of dreams. We could fill every moment with distractions and entertainments so we would not have to think about the reality that we cannot guarantee ourselves against random misfortune, nor can we hold off sickness, old age, and death forever. But sooner or later, reality will stick itself in our faces, and we will have to acknowledge our basic helplessness in the shadow of our enormous ignorance.

Another way, of which these days we have many examples, particularly in politics, is to let anger rule over our judgment. Anger is closely related to fear, like electricity is to magnetism, where you can transform the one into the other just by shifting energy. Turning fear into rage certainly can get rid of it -- get pissed off enough, and we don't care what happens to ourselves so long as we can hurt someone else. Obviously, this is less than optimal with regard to our own personal welfare, let alone everybody else's, and it doesn't really deal with our precarious situation, except by likely making it worse.

It's fortunate we have an alternative: we can also deal with our fear of the unknown by laughing at how seriously we take our own stupidity. When you really look at something, it changes. Look honestly and deeply at your desires – how many begin to seem frivolous? Just by watching yourself be angry, anger begins to look pointless and even silly. As for the nameless dread, the lack of cultural security that may be our worst social problem these days, well, why worry about something we never really had, anyway?

Why not savor the joke?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In our culture, from childhood, we're taught to Suck It In! Handsome men and beautiful women have lean flat bellies, and we should try to be like them or no one will like us.

But Hotei says, Who cares? It's OK to let it all hang out!

And this is how you meditate in Zen. You don't grab your attention and squeeze it into a tunnel of overheated searchlight awareness -- you let it cool and settle into clear pools of benevolent interest.

The purpose of the traditional meditation posture is to provide maximum stability with minimum effort. Thus, the knees and tailbone make a triangular base, and the spine is balanced like a stack of coins, not leaning to either side, front, or back. This obviously is the most efficient use of muscle, since leaning in any direction requires a compensatory effort. However, to balance the column of spinal disks this way, the pelvis has to be rotated forward somewhat. It's quite incompatible with the military posture of sucking in one's gut. Hotei's hanging belly is a literal visual depiction of how to hold your abdomen in zazen. Kind of a relief not to have to make the effort, actually, and better for breathing.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To close, the statues of the laughing fat man are to remind us that Life & Death & Walking the Way are way too important to take seriously. No matter how much we may insist on keeping our misery through fooling ourselves, we can't bring Hotei down. And Hotei lives right along with us. There he is, laughing with us, from inside, right now!

Making Mirrors, Doing Nothing

There's a certain type of precious character that infests usenet and other venues in the online Zen landscape. He - and it's always males - arrogates superiority over practitioners who meditate and receive precepts, claiming such students misunderstand the Chan ancestors. He mocks the efforts of those who spend hours on the zafu seeking to realize their Buddha-nature. Quoting the Sixth Patriarch and Vimalakirti, he declares that we are already enlightened, and so meditation is worse than useless, keeping one in the delusion of being deluded by trying to quit delusion. Does he demean sincere practitioners as a means to proclaim his own lofty realization? Does he just want to excuse his own laziness? Most annoyingly, could he be right?

Those who vaunt this view like to cite this Public Case:

Ma-tsu Tries to Become a Buddha

Huai-jang asked [Ma-tsu], "Why are you sitting in meditation?"
[Ma-tsu] replied, "Because I want to become a Buddha."
Thereupon Huai-jang took a brick and started to polish it in front of [Ma-tsu's] hermitage.
[Ma-tsu] asked him, "Why are you polishing that brick?"
Huai-jang replied, "Because I want to make a mirror."
[Ma-tsu] asked, "How can you make a mirror by polishing a brick?"
Huai-jang said, "If I cannot make a mirror by polishing a brick, how can you become a Buddha by sitting in meditation?" [1]

Huai-jang implies, pretty clearly, that you cannot become a Buddha by meditating. So how do you become a Buddha?

In Mahayana Buddhism, the teaching is that in your nature you already are Buddha, along with all other beings. How can you become what you are? How can you find something that not only is closer than your breath, more intimate than your life, but the very whatever you are searching with? It's like a fish asking the fish-sage to tell it how to find the ocean, or a bird flying up, thinking it never reaches the sky.

Furthermore, methodology itself is a hindrance. If Buddha is at the core of being, if Buddha is the core of being, any activity at all may divert the attention of awareness away from the actuality that awareness is precisely the functioning of Buddha. Any intention to change anything at all instantly alienates you from full participation in this instant, wherein alone may Buddha be sought.

And further yet, to speak of what by nature is beyond words is obviously a problem. To convey information, words must be defined, their meaning walled off from what they do not mean, so that they may function in a matrix of logic and order. How can you define what all things come from and which has no boundaries, not excluding anything at all? Words cannot contain that which contains them.

At least, not ordinary words. Language has means to transcend itself. Poetry can mean much more than it says, and questions can open to vast spaces. Though no verbal instruction in how to proceed into that realm beyond words can be other than hint and suggestion, just a finger pointing to the Moon, the Zen ancestors got rather good at verbal devices that point beyond the limits of language. Since words mislead, they appreciated contradictions, even in the scriptures. Especially in the scriptures! The Zen School revels in self-refuting formulations, helping people to take no literal teachings too seriously. Such formulae as "Zen can be summed up in two words: Not Always So!" and "Things are not as they appear, nor are they otherwise" are very dear to the heart of the lineage. Turning the meanings of words and phrases around into deeper teachings is a revered tradition.

The Sixth Patriarch said,
"Learned Audience, what is sitting for meditation? In our School, to sit means to gain absolute freedom and to be mentally unperturbed in all outward circumstances, be they good or otherwise. To meditate means to realize inwardly the imperturbability of the Essence of Mind." [2]

So "sitting" and "meditation" are here given meanings that sound other than calming the mind with a still body in a cross-legged posture. Is that right? Let's make sure!

The Sixth Patriarch also said,
"The one-act samadhi (meditative state of concentration) is to keep the mind straightforward at all times, whether walking, standing, sitting or lying down. The Vimalakirti Sutra says, 'The straightforward mind is the site of enlightenment, and the straightforward mind is the Pure Land.' . . . Just practice the straightforward mind and refrain from clinging to any dharma (i.e., thing, object): It is this that is called the one-act samadhi. The deluded cling to the characteristics of dharmas and the name of the one-act samadhi, simply saying that sitting in a motionless posture and eliminating deluded thoughts without invoking a false mind is exactly the practice of the one-act samadhi. If it is so, it would be no different from being an inanimate object, [thus hindering] the Way, however. The Way (tao) must circulate freely; why has it become blocked and stagnant? When the mind does not dwell in any dharma, then the Way flows freely. To dwell anywhere is to be shackled. If the point were just to sit motionlessly, Vimalakirti should not have scolded Shariputra for sitting quietly in the woods."[3]

What happened between Shariputra and Vimalakirti? A juicy encounter worth repeating:
When Shariputra was sitting at the foot of a tree in the forest, absorbed in contemplation,Vimalakirti said to him,
"Shariputra, this is not the way to absorb yourself in contemplation. You should absorb yourself in contemplation so that neither body nor mind appear anywhere in the triple world. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that you can manifest all ordinary behavior without forsaking cessation. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that you can manifest the nature of an ordinary person without abandoning your cultivated spiritual nature. You should absorb yourself in contemplation so that the mind neither settles within nor moves without toward external forms. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that the thirty-seven aids to enlightenment are manifest without deviation toward any convictions. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that you are released in liberation without abandoning the passions that are the province of the world."[4]

There you have it! In no uncertain terms, the Sixth Patriarch, Bodhisattva Vimalakirti, and Master Huai-jang all say one should not practice seated meditation! Our obnoxious fellow is correct, much as admitting it may hurt our stomachs. But why have generations of monks, nuns, and laypeople in Asia ignored this teaching, to sit many hours each day for year after year?

What form of meditation is best for cultivating a straightforward mind that does not depend on sitting or any other form? Experience shows it easiest to develop in a crosslegged sitting posture in one of the lotus poses, still and quiet. Because it is so much easier to develop in a crosslegged posture, and because there is a danger of addiction to blissful states, a little warning to beware of dependence was and still is called for.

Let's hear from the Sixth Patriarch again:
"I will now teach you how to explain the Dharma without deviating from the tradition of our school. . . . Should someone . . . ask you about a dharma (i.e., teaching or principle), answer him with its opposite. If you always answer with the opposite, both will be eliminated and nothing will be left, since each depends on the other for existence."[5]

The Patriarch seems to have tailored his answers depending on the listener, and suggested his successors do the same. In this he was not different from the Buddha, who spoke to individuals in the context of their history and understanding, thus providing all those delicious contradictions in the surviving records of his speech. This habit of teaching according to the needs and abilities of the student even has it's own term - upaya, usually translated as "skillful means."

From the Buddha on, a teacher's tactic was to look into the questioner's views, which are what keep them (and us) in delusion. Whatever view we cherish, the teacher's job is to deny it and affirm its opposite, until all our views crumble.[6]

In the time of the Sixth Patriarch and Ma-tzu - and also our own - monks and lay practitioners often had the tendency to believe awakening would come from meditation. Such a view, with meditation and awakening as cause and effect, sets up a duality that perpetuates the problem. The solution is to realize there is no problem, best done by sitting for many hours to learn purposeless meditation, where awakening is no different from meditation or any other activity.

Our gadfly friend, who mocks our sitting practice as brick-polishing does us a great favor, and we owe him immense gratitude. But anyone derisively using quotes from ancient worthies in some literal and authoritative way had better be ready for derisive counter-quoting.[7]

Is there a way Ma-tzu could have answered Huai-jang's question that Huai-jang would not have disapproved of? Within a long walking distance of the monastery where Ma-tsu became teacher of multitudinous disciples, another master, the illustrious Shitou, also lived and taught. Sometimes Ma even sent students to him, and Shitou returned the favor. Among Shitou's best disciples was an interesting man named Yaoshan, who was asked the same question when meditating.

Yaoshan Does Nothing

One day, as Yaoshan was sitting, Shitou asked him, "What are you doing here?"
Yaoshan said, "I'm not doing a thing."
Shitou said, "Then you're just sitting leisurely."
Yaoshan said, "If I were sitting leisurely, I'd be doing something."
Shitou said, "You say you're not doing anything. What is it that you're not doing?"
Yaoshan said, "A thousand sages don't know."[8]



[1]From Sun Face Buddha
by Cheng Chien Bhikshu
Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1992

[2]From Sutra of Hui Neng, Chapter Five,
translated by C. Humphreys and Wong Mou-Lam
http://www.sinc.stonybrook.edu/Clubs/buddhism/huineng/huineng5.html

[3]From The Mandala Sutra and its English Translation, Section 14
Revised by Prof. Yang Zengwen
Taipei: Mantra Publishers 2004

[4]From The Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra, Chapter Three,
translated by Robert A. F. Thurman
http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln260/Vimalakirti.htm

[5]From The Sixth Patriarch's Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra, Chapter Ten
English translation by the Buddhist Text Translation Society,
Commentary of Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua
http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Buddhism/Platform%20Sutra.pdf

[6]For another example, old Lin-ji (Rinzai) gives his game away:
Master Lin-ji said,
"Students flock to me from all parts. I sort them out according to three kinds of root-ability. If a middling to low one comes, I snatch away the circumstance but leave him the Dharma. If one with a middling to high ability comes, I snatch away both the circumstance and the Dharma. If one with an exceptionally high ability comes, I snatch neither the circumstance nor the Dharma nor the man. And if there should come one whose understanding is outside the norm, I act from the wholeness without bothering about the root-ability."
From The Zen Teaching of Rinzai, Section 28
by Irmgard Schloegl
http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/zenrinzai.pdf

[7]Such people have been around a long time. Master Bassui Tokusho (1327-1387) decribed some in the Fourteenth Century, saying that, after they thought they had attained enlightenment, they "behave haughtily through lack of wisdom; engage eagerly in debates on religion, taking delight in cornering their opponents but becoming angry when cornered themselves; appear perpetually discontented while no longer believing in the law of causation; go about telling jokes in a loud, jabbering voice; deliberately disturb and ridicule those who study and strive earnestly, calling them clods whose practice is not Zen."
From "Bassui's Sermon on One-Mind and Letters to His Disciples"
Chapter IV of The Three Pillars of Zen
compiled and edited by Philip Kapleau
Boston: Beacon Press 1967

[8]From Zen's Chinese Heritage_
by Andrew E. Ferguson
Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2000

Imbolc

I don't know why Imbolc should be my favorite of the eight pagan holy days of the quarters and cross-quarters. I like Beltane and Samhain just fine, but there is something special about February Second. Perhaps it's when the contrast is starkest, of the grim white desert where nothing is alive, save for the one who perceives that nothing is alive! Lost in the wind of a snowy field, where great elementals shuffle the weather for a new game of generations, the small flame of life in a huddled breast feels the profoundest of gratitude. We all love Yule because it's the rebirth of the Light and a promise of the return of summer, but it is only now that we know this on a biological level, in our cells. Some deep dark magic stirs, like a seed getting ready to prepare for initiating the preliminaries of germination. From now on, signs of spring are real and not hallucinatory -- soon the weeping willows will take on a golden glow over their leafless limbs, and soon thereafter the mapled hills tinge themselves subtly ruddy.

My friend and teacher, James I. Ford, Zen Man and the very icon of a New England Unitarian Minister, has a wonderful tribute to Brigid, the saint and the goddess, whose feast time is now, which is well worth experiencing. It's over at Monkey Mind Online, .

In times past, twice, pagan groups had approached me in email to ask to use a poem from my sometimes manifest personal Website, with the title Imbolc. Such flattery tends to win my assent. I though it good to publish the poem again here. Anyone can use it, providing they credit me and let me know.

Stay warm by your hearth, cherish your beloved ones, and finally dare to dream of spring.



Imbolc

It's not yet spring but you awake
the yearning in me that
will not wait for warm breezes

A candle in a cave--
in snowy fields, a lone prayer
for the town asleep below the hill

One stands at the ocean,
calling forth the tide
to rise once more in bay and blood

Two meet on a road in the dark
and walk into windless groves where
dryads keep to dream, and wait

The candle ignites the sky to pink--
the spirits stir within
the chambers of the twigs

Belief & Knowledge

Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:59:42 -0800 (PST)
From: Robin Edgar

Robin Edgar has left a new comment on your post "What do you believe in?":

Q: Do you believe in God?
A: No.
Q: So, you are an atheist!
A: No.

It occurs to me that this would be an appropriate response from someone who knows that God exists as a result of direct personal experience of God. . . Carl Gustav Jung being just one example amongst many others.

***

My response to Robin Edgar:

Correct in that one who knows has no need of belief, which is held to be a less certain state of mind than knowledge. But distinguishing knowledge and belief is very difficult, if possible at all.

Direct experience is certainly the best way to attempt certainty, but there is no way to acquire absolute certainty in a logically compelling way. At first glance, an epiphany, a personal experience of the divine, would seem to be absolutely convincing, but in its bare experience it belongs only to the one who has the epiphany. All others must be content with hearing about it, and, if it's important to do so, they must decide whether to believe or not, and how much. Even the person with the epiphany can question it, for people in dreaming, or in psychosis, can be utterly convinced of realities that fade with awakening or the reemergence of sanity. In my own experience, I have found it impossible to know for sure that one is not dreaming at any given moment.

Let me tell a little story, that I assure you is completely factual.


An adherent of Asatru named Dirk is indulging in some aquavit in a bar in Norway, when an interesting character shows up and sits on the stool next to him. The guy introduces himself as Odin and offers to buy him a horn of mead. Dirk is a modern man and will not simply take even a god's word at face value, though this fellow may certainly look the part and exude divine charisma all over the place. Although he gladly accepts the horn, he asks for some proof of godship before accepting that claim. Odin pulls out a deck of cards and starts shuffling. "Something more dramatic than a card trick," asks Dirk. Waggling his white eyebrows, the old man laughs, "As you say!"

The day turns dark, and the wind picks up, even inside the bar. The shimmering form of Freya appears hovering before our friend Dirk. Never has he seen any female so beautiful! She reaches out and he feels her hand take his. She says only, "Come!" and the bar and Odin disappear. Freya remains, but Dirk is no longer sure that he does. She leads him to spaces and places where wild fires roar with the heat of billions of exploding stars, and she takes him by still waters where peace is so profound you can heal all of eternity's heart's wounds. She takes him to her rainbowed bed and lets him make love to her until he forgets his humanity on the spill of amrita through his veins and out his loins. And then, Dirk spent and content, she takes him back to the bar where the funny old man with the white beard is chortling into his mead.

When Freya disappears and all is as before, he asks, "Better than a card trick?" After a moment to gather his wits, Dirk says, "Could be proof you're a pretty good hypnotist!" The All-Father shouts, "That's my boy!" and continues:

All we have, inside and outside of us, is appearances. We play a game of "as if," relying on consistencies as we perceive them, to gain the appearance of pleasure and avoid the appearance of pain. The truth lies behind a screen where the shadows of puppets play, and even if you could peer behind the screen, how can you know you see more than just more shadows?

Dirk nods and says, "Now I can believe you're the All-Father. Still a pretty good hypnotist, though."

***

Now, maybe there is some direct way of knowing, bypassing the senses and any other medium. But how would the knower know this knowing is true? You can say that such knowing is self-validating, and I bet it sure is! But self-validation can also occurs in psychosis. You say this is not true self-validation? Please show me the difference!

This is one reason why traditions such as Zen set such high value on a teacher's validation of one's insights. Even so, a teacher's validation may be just another hallucination.

Give up the quest for certainty, I say . . . settle for a measure of consistency in your dreams!