Setting up the first Zen monestary in San Francisco - Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

For this post I thought id upload some videos on Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and his setting up of the very first Zen monastery in San Fransisco. All three parts offer a very interesting insight into not only Zen and meditation, but also how a monastery functions in a surrounding community populated primarily by non-Buddhists. The following 5 parts can be found on youtube. Enjoy!

 

 

 

The way of religion, the way of the spirit

It is now more common than ever for people to call themselves 'spiritual'; a term which seems to signify a person's desire to be religious, but to do so in a style which is dis-organised and spontaneous rather than structured and formal. This perhaps is a present day manifestation of what was historically known as 'the mystic tradition', within this tradition (if we can call it one) would-be mystics sought to express their spiritual libido through the chaos of everyday life as opposed to the more traditional outlet of the religious institution. Unlike in the past where displays of religious non-conformity were fiercely condemned however, today we generally find that such errant forms of worship go by more or less unpunished.

Unfortunately for those who hold tradition close to their heart however, where stigmatism counts for social exclusion, in todays world it is more often the origanised religion rather than disorganised one which finds itself left out in the cold. This has not of course, gone unnoticed by the church, and periodically a Dean or Archbishop will come out to remind us that although going against convention can be fun, to depart from religious convention will ultimately lead us down a series of blind alleys culminating in a spiritual 'dead-end'.

If a person has in fact left all the old methods of religious navigation behind to pursue a faith entirely uncharted, such warnings are no doubt fair and right. However what the Churchman often tends to overlook, is that the spiritually-minded person is not someone recklessly wandering off into unknown territory like the mystic of old, but is in fact following a well-worn religious path with a slightly alternative set of props– the 'weekend retreat' is simply what the spiritual-person calls his church, the 'support group' is no more or less than what amounts to the church-goer's parish community, and the Christian God who art our father in heaven, is simply exchanged for the more forgiving figure of the Mother who listens rather than lectures. Once we fully compare the spiritual and religious movements in fact, whether the religions we have selected happen to be Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism, it seems we have little more to contrast but superficial differences in style underlying a common aim – to connect with others in the communal act of experiencing something far greater, wise and more bewildering than anything ordinarily admitted by habitual experience.

To conclude from this that there is no real division within spirituality or religion would perhaps be somewhat pre-emptive however; although both movements stand mutually undivided in their common aims and beliefs, both movements through their practice have managed to divide themselves from something infinitely more significant - their object of worship. By informing us that religious observance is something that goes 'here' but not 'there' or that spiritual practice is something that takes place under 'these' circumstances but not 'those', all traditions unwittingly segregate us from the spiritual nature of all other circumstances. Mecca, Jerusalem or our weekend retreat may well be 'sacred ground', but if this is all we find sacred than we have by effect 'secularised' the ground upon which we walk everyday. The activity or drama of being religious or being spiritual becomes something we only feel comfortable doing at a designated location while modeling our beads, cassock or Kippah.

If the habitat and dress of the spiritual-theist really are little more than the props of a highly elaborate performance however, what then are we to make of the Buddhist monk who wears her orange robes, or the weekend-monk who strolls about in his smock and sandals? Would it be fair to insist that such a person is merely playing at being the sage and that; following in the footsteps of the mystic, they should lay all symbols and rituals aside? This surely would be a mistake. Aesthetically we do not lose anything by wearing what would be unconventional if we wore it on the high street, while conversely we do not become any more spiritually authentic because we have chosen to wear a dull knitted jumper. Moreover we often tend to overlook the fact that most forms of ceremonial dress were originally devised not for their 'religious colour' but for their practical convenience: The Samue of Zen Buddhism for instance comprises no more than a pair of draw-string trousers and a vest which can be quickly and easily taken and off again. While the dyed orange and yellow robes of traditional Theravada and Hinayana Buddhism often understood to impart subtle differences in doctrinal understanding, were originally dyed these colours simply because these were the dyes most easily attainable in their respective regions.

Most religious wear in this way did not originate for the purpose of segregating people from the ordinary unenlightened masses, but rather took its origin in the simple desire to be practical, thrifty and if at all possible 'elegant'. All of this is easily forgotten with the passage of time however and the outer-garments and props of religion can easily come to embody all the practice and virtues that were supposed to be independent of anything to do with culture, fashion or tradition. In fact even when we do not observe any rituals or dress up in any particular 'garb' in order to engage in the spiritual, we can still make the mistake of diluting divine feeling down to that which is transient and superficial. We might say “I am a spiritual person” or “At heart I’m a deeply religious person” and here we reduce the expansive mystic experience down to something we might put down on a dating questionnaire – 'I'm also a huge romantic and have a great sense of humour'. To identify our ego with the divine in this way is surely far more debasing of our beliefs than the monk who simply happens to worship in a monastery because it is nice and quiet, and who shaves his head and wears his robes for no other reason than his dislike of hairdressers and his practical need for something easy to move about in. Such a person does not identify his clothes or his place of worship as anything other than incidental to his spiritual path, whereas the individual who identifies the divine with his persona (that is to say his 'mask') believes his social veneer to represent the full depth of his spiritual conviction.

Whether we identify our spiritual sensibilities with a specific part of ourselves, our wardrobe, or some part of the world is perhaps irrelevant however since in the final analysis all of these forms of reduction always amount to the same thing – we unwittingly fuse the sacred with the singular and discrete when if there is any common basis to all theology, it is that the divine is not something particular but something universal. This does not of course mean that there is nothing sacred to be found in the personal or particular – beyond their aesthetic appeal or functional practicality, we may naturally find our religious symbols and icons to be both expressions of the complete order as well as expressions of our own divine feeling. But we surely distort the common theme of religious-spiritual teachings when we attempt to assert that any of these things have an exclusive claim or 'right' to this status. If we wish to be spiritual or religious in the authentic sense of accepting everything as sacred without prejudice or preference, it seems we cannot afford to consign the spiritual to any single object or event;  all events and objects must stand equal in their intrinsic value. Whether anyone in human history has actually managed to adopt such a broad and undiscriminating mind as this is another story. If however on our journey through life we ever happened to encounter an individual who is happy enough to wear beads of dried dung as he is of polished ebony, or to take a toilet stall for his chapel rather than a well-ventilated cathedral, we might well assume we had already met him. 

What is the Problem?

In life it is said, we often find “more problems than answers”; we attract calamities to ourselves with an almost superhuman ease, while grace and fortune stubbornly resist all our efforts of charm and cunning. It is also a well-known truth however, that one man's problem is another man's blessing to which the rule may also be inversely applied, and so before we complain about our problems we better be sure that we are actually in possession of a real one.

In the strictest possible sense, we might distinguish a real problem from a false one by the condition that any real problem will always work against our advantage in every case, whereas a false one will only prove problematic here and there. But very rarely if ever can we imagine such a cast-iron example: Failing to gain asylum to a country might seem like a predicament free of any possible benefit, however for all we know gaining it may have very well lead to a fate worse than death. Losing the love of our life may seem unbearable with no positive outcome at all, but we could well imagine a situation in which their continued presence may have indirectly lead to the death of our whole family. Even taking an extreme example in which we ourselves die an untimely and tragic death, such a tragedy may also be considered a great blessing in that it has ultimately delivered from the slow and tedious death of old age. And so if there is any real predicament to be faced, it is really no more than our inability to know for certain whether our disappointments are blessings in disguise, or whether our blessings merely conceal further disappointments.

So let us look at this problem; the only one we ever have – our predicament of not knowing whether we have been cursed with problems or graced with good fortune, what would happen if we could know for sure whether a situation would in the long-run turn out to be advantageous or not? Well naturally we would be able follow each and every path we knew would lead to a favourable outcome, and in doing so create heaven right here on earth. But if we are convinced such a world would be heaven manifest, we have perhaps misunderstood the entire notion of paradise altogether: While it may be 'heavenly' to see every one of our plans come to fruition immediately and exactly as we envisaged, we would have also in the process cut ourselves off from the possibility of generating any new ones, since as every successful person knows: 'Good plans are not conceived in the comfort of security but in the turmoil of defeat'. By necessity then, our paradise would have to be one in which we could just as much expect disaster and defeat as success and bliss; an ethereal wonderland where good luck and bad luck happily existed side by side. If this is our definition of heaven however, could it not be that we are already in it? We seem after all, to have just described the exact conditions we find ourselves in.

Such a conclusion may not immediately seem obvious. It could well be argued in fact that the central flaw with our world is that our problems are often so many that we are not propelled by them into greatness, but mired down by them into self-despair. We are all familiar enough with those unfortunate individuals who have been disproportionately burdened with homelessness, terminal illness as well as a lack of steady employment. For these sorry people the possibility of rendering their situation as hopeful rather than tragic seems slim if not impossible. However, before we judge how many problems is one too many, it seems that we must first ask whether such a person would in fact recognise the blessing in having their situation completely transformed. All too often we accept good fortune not in the manner of a thankful adult but as a spoilt child finally receiving a present: "About time! I wondered when exactly you were going to give me my just deserts. Thank goodness you finally have!" And in this way it seems that our over-riding burden is not whatever positive accumulation of burdens we feel we have we have been unfairly apportioned, but rather the negative burden of simply failing to appreciate our blessings. It is perhaps only the individual who expects nothing from the universe and seeks nothing in return who is able to transcend this thankless state of mind and cherish every blessing that comes their way. This is the archetypal monk or sage presented to us throughout world religion. The person who has finally 'got it'. But if we think for one second that that we can transform ourselves to become this sort of person then we will have only succeeded in multiplying our burdens even further: If there is any central canon to the world's religions it is that as much as we would like to be Dogen or one of Christ's apostles we can only really succeed in being ourselves. This does not of course mean that we should not seek inspiration from the sage. It simply means we should not frustrate ourselves by mimicking something impossible. The sage after all is not some cosmic super being immune to all the horrors and disappointments that life naturally brings, the sage is only a sage in as much as he understands one simple thing – that in frustration resides the seeds of peace, and that in peace lurks the embryo of frustration.

Reflecting upon this subtle yet obvious truth and applying it to our original problem then: 'How do we distinguish our blessings from our misfortunes?' it appears we already have our answer: 'There are no inherently problematic or fortuitous situations. I’m afraid all this time you’ve been trying to work out whether the hill is an interpolation of the valley, or the valley an interruption of the hill when there is in reality no correct view to be had. Both perspectives may be interchanged ad infinitum.' Realising this we may no doubt get it into our heads that we have finally uncovered the secret that will win them the game: 'If every crisis is potentially a blessing in disguise then how wonderful! From now on I shall invert my perspective from now on so that all I see is blessings!' But this is quite mistaken. Being enlightened to the fact that problems and good fortunes are only constructs of our minds does not now mean it is practical (or even possible) to embrace every woe as a blessing. It means having the good sense to embrace our woes as woes. It is only in this way that they will take root as our catalysts for future growth and blossom into blessings. In doing so, we may natrually wish to recognise and cherish our blessings once they have finally flourished as well, and in many ways this can often prove the greatest challenge of all. But in reality our challenge is really no more strenuous than the spontaneous deduction our eye makes that there must be a 'hill' every time it sees two valleys next to each other. In the exact same sense, we need only take note of the problems going on all around us in order for the blessings right in front of us to fall into view. If we can adeptly master this, then in the most practical sense possible we will have grasped what every sage has known all along: “problems and successes are only a matter of perspective.”

The Engagement of Escapism

While it is both tempting and popular to dismiss most forms of mental, spiritual and physical exploration as mere 'escapism', we may often find that in doing so we have got things back to front. If for instance it is said that I have ingested drugs to escape from reality, then you have not understood what drug-taking entails. When I take a psycho-active substance it is not because I wish to remove myself from reality, but because I want to draw myself closer to it so that it may be reborn as something otherwordly and surreal. What is so regularly overlooked however, is that this 'otherworld' is not really a separate world from the one ordinarily experienced but the same world viewed from a different perspective. Indeed, in the same spirit of misunderstanding micro-biologists are often prone to talk of the 'microscopic world' of tripple-horned bedbugs and armour-plated mites - where the fibres of an unassuming rug suddenly transform into the ravines and valleys of an insane cotton landscape. But this microscopic world is not really extraterrestrial to our own, as we well know it is the very same environment magnified by several hundred degrees of enlargement.

Never the less, it is always so much more comforting to talk of 'different worlds' and 'other realms'; psychonaughts take 'trips into space' while less-experienced drug users are written off as 'space-cadets' - as if the rest of the universe was an ethereal la-la land ruled by nonsense and caprice. It is apparently all to easy to forget that outer space is the same space that separates the contents of our room; that the stars which seem so alien and implausible in the night's sky are only our planet's own sun as if viewed from a greater distance. If there is any collective reason for this habit of ours, it may simply be that whatever appears sensible or otherwise 'insane' is really just a matter of relative proximity; a possibility which becomes even more plausible once we consider similar experiences to these. A familiar word like “waving” for instance which might seem reasonable enough from the vantage point of casual conversation, quickly turns into nonsense when we draw our attention closer to it by repeating it over and over. Conversely, when we put considerable distance between ourselves and our habitat by taking a ride in a plane, the mass of alien shapes viewed from above scarcely seems to resemble the house we know down below.

Intelligent couples have for many centuries, and with great success, capitalised on these peculiar facts of perspective in order to breathe new life into their relationships: While one lover stays at home, the other typically takes a short holiday, and upon returning both lovers come to realise a subtle yet obvious truth that their partner was not the 'ball & chain' they had previously thought; but was in fact the key to the gates of paradise all along. So effective is this brief shift in perspective in allowing us experience the ordinary as the extraordinary, we may even wish there was a similar way of gaining a fresh vantage point on the planet upon which we are permanently rooted. To this science fiction writers and artists have provided us with a disarmingly simple solution – by constructing fantastic aliens landscapes almost like our own but not quite, we may come to indirectly appreciate the full weirdness of our own habitat by extension. An alien race that segregates itself on the basis of earlobe markings might appear far-fetched and bizarre; until we realise that this is almost exactly how we have segregated our own species at various times on earth. A world with two moons seems insane; until we stop to consider why exactly having one moon should be any more sensible than having two.  

In this way all great science fiction, much like all great intoxicants and forms of art, draws our attention back to the fundamental presence of reality by the simple device of rearranging or altering its basic and incidental elements. A tree on psilocybin is far more a tree than the one encountered sober, since the psychedelic tree of exaggerated proportions has forced you to recognise that there was a tree there at all. A cubist painting of a head is far more of a head than the one on your shoulders, since the startling effect of viewing one from every angle at once has made you consider the full multiplicity of what a head entails. It is of course reasonable to assume that not everyone will be bowled over by cubism or impressed by the polychromatic visions of an acid trip, but the point here isn't to say how wonderful activities such as these are, only that such activities when we are fully absorbed with them are really a form of 'engagement' rather than 'escapism'. It is perhaps both unfortunate and unfair in this respect that the individual who is far happier reading a book than going out socialising with their friends, is so often written off as a “daydreamer” refusing to live in “the real world”. Although it may be true that such a person has to an extent withdrawn themselves from social reality, a short departure from social reality does not equate to a complete break from reality itself. However given that for most people 'social reality' is the only consistent reality they have ever known, it may become all too convenient to assume that they have.

While such a dogmatic point of view may be understandable in as much we might see how a person could have reached it, this does not of course make it a reasonable view to hold by extension: Even if we could somehow show that reality had any special relationship with familiarity as opposed to unfamiliarity, we would still be placed in the worrying situation of explaining why our familiar and stable world should so readily crumble into a la-la land of irrational nonsense when placed under the r x-ray or microscope. In reconciling ourselves with such facts, we might just have to accept that everything that is familiar from a certain perspective is also unfamiliar and that everything that is familiar can be made to look unfamiliar, that is to say; 'real or imaginary'. As a last resort we could perhaps argue that the real difference between the fantastic and otherworldly and the concrete and real is that reality, unlike fantasy, can always be counted upon to obey regular and consistent laws. But even the madman who harbours paranoid delusions of whole governments and nation states conspiring against him can show consistency in his flawed logic and a method to his madness, and so it will always prove impossible to be certain that we aren’t doing the same thing. 

To get involved in philosophical debates over the difference between 'appearance' and 'reality' however is perhaps besides the point here. Rightness and wrongness do not in themselves tell us anything about how much we have lived or how well. In experiencing anything it seems the primary dilemma we face is not in discovering how true or false it is, but in how willing we are are to experience its nature; real or otherwise. From the stand-point of 'living' rather than being 'right' then, we might say the only real test of experience is how weird or alternatively how mundane it has always appeared to us - If it has always manifested itself before us as something strange and unfamiliar we might say we have known it very well, while if it has been no more than the 'run of the mill' than we probably have not bothered to get to know it at all. 

Although the idea that we know something far better when we encounter it as something unfamiliar may strike us as counter-intuitive and contrary, it will hopefully be clear by now that it is only by attempting to find the esoteric in the conventional that we can ever be said to have achieved the true intimacy of knowing something through its carefully held secrets. The drug-user or science fiction enthusiast in this sense is not an 'escapee' who has taken reality for his prison, but an individual who wishes to explore his habitat in the proper sense of uncovering all its hidden passages and concealed oddities. It is really the person who insists on looking at life 'straight-forwardly' who withdraws themselves from experience, since to approach life head-on is to miss all the action going on around the sides. If we have any inclination to know life in the full and complete sense, it seems unavoidably clear that we must take all vantage points and perspectives into account. In doing so it is of course possible that we will be accused of 'escaping' the very thing we are trying to gain access to, but if so; so what? All the better for the person who misunderstands us when they finally become enlightened to our secret – that we were really engaging with it all along.