Author: dorakuan

The workshop was located in the Guwenhua Jie tourist street in Tianjin, surrounded by souvenir shops. I did not really believe from the very beginning that we should have our seals carved here, and when a young guy, looking more like a biker or rock musician, presented himself as the artist I suggested to leave. A second look at the artwork displayed in the shelves supported my initial doubts, tacky manga creatures obviously made for customers in their late teens seemed to be the main business.

While we talked a bit, I discovered the Hannya Shingyo, printed with beautifully carved seals hanging on the wall. And another version on the opposite wall. “The one was an assignment from the Shaolin Temple, carved in expensive stones”, the young seal maker explained, “the other one for a poor Buddhist temple, where I had to cut a large seal-stone into slices to save money”.

We started discussing the design and proper choice of characters for the seals I had in mind, and soon it was clear that we not only had discovered a sincere Buddhist, but also a true master of his art. After an hour or so of interesting conversation we reached agreement, and shortly after the seals where made. While carving, he explained to us that his waiting list for custom-made seals currently is a few months, but since he enjoys exchange with sincere people appreciating his art, and we came from so far, he makes an exception for us.

The real master is often hidden and easy to miss, I thought when leaving, though nowadays it might not always be a cloudy mountain hermitage where he lives.

As a young Aikido teacher, I always had a hard time to explain to whom and why we bow at the beginning and end of each class. My students got the message, that it is not the picture of Morihei Ueshiba hanging in the kamiza we are bowing to, neither anything else considered as sacred. Instead, we bow to all our seniors, ancestors and teachers. Since teacher and students bow together in the same direction, I explained, we all become students, respecting those countless before us, who kindly handed down their skills and art to us.

Today, I saw at a very old temple in Beijing a believer kneeling down and bowing in front of a closed building. I wondered to what he his bowing, so after he was gone, I peeked through a gap in the door. Inside the room there was a pile of rubbish and old furniture, nothing else.

Not caring if it is garbage or the famous lying Buddha (supposed to be inside the building) we bow to, this might be real Zen, I thought.

Before going to China, I wrote a calligraphy with the Characters of “willow” and “wind”, yanagi ni kaze (柳に風). The person to whom I gave it, I explained the meaning is “a willow survives the strongest wind and heaviest snow, because it bends under the load and comes back up straight after the troubles are gone”.

In Beijing I was astonished and happy to see very vital Buddhist temples with monks practising and lay people joining a Sutra chanting ceremony. It seems, the barbaric years of the culture revolution could not eradicate this part of China’s rich cultural heritage.

But I was mistaken in my naive assumption that finding a Zen temple is as easy in China’s capital as it is in Kyoto. The nearest one, I was told, is hours by train and bus. Could that be true? So I had to give up my idea to practise Zazen in a Chinese temple for this time.

Though, if I ever come back to Beijing, I wish for a chance to bring some Zen back to its roots.

For the first time I am going to visit China. While writing, I regret that posting will be delayed, since blogspot.com is blocked by the Great Chinese Firewall, and I don’t want to bring my kind hosts in trouble by tunnelling data to websites considered as illegal here.

I am not so much concerned by censorship, which can always be bypassed, but by the fact how much power the Chinese government believes words can have.

In Zen, we do not give much about words, it is more our actions or non-actions that speak.

Practising Zen might not be able to synchronise a large number of people quick and efficiently, for example to launch a revolution against the political regime. But I believe it is more persistent and much stronger than any political regime can dream of, and not easily affected by any censorship.

As a kid, I hated eating rice. My childhood rice-related memories are all about something dry and completely tasteless, usually served together with some meat. I was only able to swallow the rice with sufficient butter melted on top, or mixed into the gravy.

While washing the rice for tonight’s dinner, I thought what a long way it was for me from “Uncle Ben’s parboiled rice” to the “Yume Nishiki” Japanese grain I usually eat these days.

Aside from taste and texture, the process of preparation is so very different: instead of throwing pre-packed little plastic bags into the boiling water, I thoroughly wash my rice several times by hand. Then, I put it in a colander for 20 minutes, and afterwards soak it in water for a few hours before eventually boiling it. I take care not to loose a single grain during the process. Often I cook it together with kombu, or further process it to some sushi rice by adding vinegar, or form it into onigiri rice balls.

This way, by washing it slowly and carefully, a bowl of rice becomes something special, a delicious, precious meal full of taste and flavour!

It is getting cold, a few days ago I saw the first hoarfrost sparkling in the early morning light. Also inside my house and Dojo it is a bit chilly now.

Here in Germany, we spend a big amount of energy and money to heat our complete flats and houses up to comfortable 20 degrees in winter time. And during the past decade or so, technology was developed to isolate walls, roof and windows, reduce ventilation, ideally achieving a high-tech zero energy house. My 300 years old mill is quite the opposite. It’s simply cold inside, when it is cold outside, and heating up the whole place is far too expensive, not talking about the waste of energy.

During my winter-stays in Japan I learnt about another low-energy housing idea: instead of isolating and heating the whole house, just heat up the place where you sit: a table, covered by a warm quilt, and a low energy heating device underneath, a simple and cheap solution. The upper body and head stay fresh in the cool air, while legs and belly are comfortably warm … and it requires just about as little energy as boiling some water for tea. In Japan, this is called kotatsu, still common and much appreciated as the families’ gathering place, even nowadays and in rather new houses.

I like the simplicity of the idea!

—

P.S.: “And what during Zazen?” I have been asked. Well, it is always above zero in my Dojo, opposite to some Japanese temples during winter Rohatsu Sesshin. Also, Zazen helps to produce lots of heat … and no worry, for seminars I switch on central heating!

—

P.P.S.: I usually don’t think it is necessary to stick a “Warning! Don’t …” – label to each and every idea. Since more than one of my readers were concerned about risk of fire: in Japan, electric kotatsu are ready-to-buy and safe units. Any DIY solution has to be planned with necessary care against over-heating, of course. Also lighting incense bares the risk of setting fire in the Dojo …

The leaves of the small maple tree in my Dojo’s garden changed colour into a beautiful dark red during the last week.

Around this time, in Japan the moon viewing festival tsukimi (月見) is celebrated. It is believed that mid-autumn is the best season to enjoy the view of the full moon, chushu no meigetsu (中秋の名月).

It is a nice co-incidence, that the four seasons so cherished in Japan do pass about the same time here. So, if we like, we can share some Japanese seasonal customs in addition to (or instead of) our own.

To know that the moon is always perfectly full and round, 365 days a year regardless of date and season, is maybe more related to physics than Zen. Though the experience that things might be different from their temporary appearance, and not being fooled by this, is essential for both, Zen and science …

After the morning Zazen, we chant the Heart Sutra (Hannya Shingyo) and the Shigu Seigan Mon, accompanied by the bell and the wooden drum, Mokugyo. This is not much for a Morning Ceremony, and yet it is fair to ask, why at all do we chant texts in ancient Japanese (we maybe do not even understand)?

Although in Zen practice I usually suggest to try first, and then ask for the details of how and why, I believe there are some good reasons to stay with these old texts:

• These two texts are kind of basic, all over the world for all Buddhist and Zen schools. In the West, we are about to find our own Way of Zen, but not always we want to break with tradition.
• Our Zen came from Japan, and remembering and keeping alive some of its Japanese roots is o.k.
• It is beautiful, the sound, the unification of mind and body through breath and voice! Also, chanting words which (at least for the beginner) do not make much more sense than blah blah blah does not distract the mind too much, it is a very good exercise!

Of course, the Hannya Shingyo contains some very deep meaning, and part of it is still recited in its original Pali version. But it is o.k. to ignore all this for the time being, and simply enjoy chanting with a loud voice “Maka Hannya Haramita …”

Not to talk, not to explain yourself, not verbalising your emotions, might easily seem arrogant. Or, for those experienced with therapy, indicate an inhibited character.

Not to talk, I believe, is a mercy.

These days I read an article about a New York based psychotherapist, who continued working through the whole day of September 11th, 2001. The article describes how she and her patients talked and talked, as if to mure themselves with words. Did it bring them any relieve in the face of the disaster?

“It was a total disavowal”, the therapist confessed.

What drives us to build a second world of words and ideas, instead of facing the unbearable (and often also instead of facing the bearable, which we just want to look a bit nicer)?

I remember a scene from Akira Kurosawa’s movie Rhapsodie in August, in which two old ladies, who both survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, met for a coup of tea without talking a word. This not talking made a great impression on the grandchildren of one of the ladies, as well as on myself.

Today’s September 11th is exactly six months after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Sharing intense time, silently, is what we also do during Zazen. At times, for some of us, while bearing the unbearable.

The first book on Zen I read was a clear, nicely written more or less unpolished transcript of the Zen-talks given in plain English by S. Suzuki to his American students (Zen Mind, Beginners Mind). After that, unfortunately, I came upon books which were very hard, if not impossible to understand. Books full of contradiction, ambiguous and mystic words, which in the end made me belief that the only chance to really understand Zen is being a Japanese Zen-monk in a Japanese Zen-temple, centuries ago.

It took me a considerable way down the road of learning the Japanese language, until I realised that much of the confusion in Zen-texts is very likely more or less just a translation problem. Let me quote Richard Feynman, the famous physicist, on the subject of learning Japanese, to illustrate that point:

While in Kyoto I tried to learn Japanese with a vengeance. I worked much harder at it, and got to a point where I could go around in taxis and do things. I took lessons from a Japanese man every day for an hour.

One day he was teaching me the word for “see.” “All right,” he said. “You want to say, ‘May I see your garden?‘ What do you say?” I made up a sentence with the word that I had just learned. “No, no!” he said. “When you say to someone, ‘Would you like to see my garden?’ you use the first ‘see.’ But when you want to see someone else’s garden, you must use another ‘see’, which is more polite.” “Would you like to glance at my lousy garden?” is essentially what you’re saying in the first case, but when you want to look at the other fella’s garden, you have to say something like, “May I observe your gorgeous garden?” So there’s two different words you have to use.

Then he gave me another one: “You go to a temple, and you want to look at the gardens…” I made up a sentence, this time with the polite “see.” “No, no!” he said. “In the temple, the gardens are much more elegant. So you have to say something that would be equivalent to ‘May I hang my eyes on your most exquisite gardens?‘

Three or four different words for one idea, because when I’m doing it, it’s miserable; when you’re doing it, it’s elegant […]. I gave up. I decided that wasn’t the language for me, and stopped learning Japanese.

(text taken from wikiquote)

Feynman was not a stupid person, and politeness, confusing as it may sound in the above quotation, is yet a solvable issue. Much more severe is the lack of a subject in many Japanese sentences (this is to be derived form the politeness level), and (compared to any European language I know) a much greater ambiguity of many expressions.

What does that mean for our understanding of (the English translation of) some ancient writings on Zen? Although the ancient Masters’ life and actions were clear and exemplary to his students, his writings skills might not have been on the same level. Adding to that a time distance of a few centuries and the above mentioned language and translation issues, even a plain description how to wash your bowl might in the end sound like a nebulous spiritual revelation of some deep secrets. It is not. It is just written communication gone wrong …

If some Zen-text does not make sense to you, don’t waste too much time on trying to understand it by reasoning! Don’t expect a deep secret behind the words, don’t get frustrated and don’t try to sound clever by quoting what you did not understand yourself … better spend your time in practising a few rounds of Zazen!