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The subject is probably as old as Zen Buddhism is known in the West: can psychedelic drugs potentially support or even replace Zen practice as a spiritual path? I probably cannot answer this questions from my own experience, since my drug abuse was limited to consuming moderate quantities of Franconian draft beer during my younger days. Not that I completely want to deny the mind-expanding effects of this local speciality, but long-term effects turned out to be more belly expanding than anything else.

Recently we watched a movie (1) where random members of a small Zen group consumed psycedelic drugs in a more or less scientifically controlled framework (2), while the other part of the group stayed sober. One obvious outcome for the observer is that consuming psycedelic drugs makes it much less likely you properly fit into a group of Zen practitioners. From odd beahviour to total loss of self-control everything could be observed, but nothing which appears to make the person be more fit to participate, more likely to bring benefit to the group. You just drop out.

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
(…)
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall

– Jefferson Airplane

A lot happens in the drug induced mind. From a scientific point of view, the stimulation of psycedelic drugs is very similar, yet often much stronger, than the physiological reward system which naturally brings some “high” for us after doing sports and other joyful social activities. Taking drugs is in that sense comparable to rewarding yourself without achievement. You trick your brain into receiving some reward, without having performed anything deserving it.

This is obviously not a shortcut towards a happy life. It is like rewarding every kid with a gold medal after the race. You might feel like a winner, proudly showing off the shiny medal hanging from your neck. But in reality, all you achieved, and all you can achieve at your current condition is hardly making it to the finish line.

Jefferson Airplane あなただけを (Somebody To Love) Japanese vinyl single cover.

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off with her head

– Jefferson Airplane

If your goal in life is just feeling good without reason, drugs might work out for you, at least for the time being. Zen is not about a shortcut towards “feeling good”. It is a practice making you fit for life. You might not feel like a winner, no shiny medal to be achieved. But you learn how to reach a finish line and beyond. You learn how to conduct a good life, your life. With a good teacher, a good sangha, you learn how to develop into a contributing and compassionate human being, in balance with yourself and your environment.

End of the day (or a good work-out) it might feel the same, maybe in a weaker sense, as after taking drugs. Yet, this feeling is based on some strong real-life aspect, not just on chemistry induced state of your brain, while the world around you has increasing troubles taking care of you.

This is more or less in alignment with the outcome of the above mentioned experiement. It is worth quoting the results summary of the related publication (2, bold/italics inserted by myself):

Compared to meditation with a placebo, meditators who received DMT and harmine self-attributed greater levels of mystical-type experiences, non-dual awareness, and emotional breakthrough during the acute substance effects and,  (..) greater psychological insight 1 day later. Mindfulness and compassion were not significantly different in the DMT-harmine group compared to placebo.

Taking DMT makes you feel better, mystical, more emotional, but actually mindfulness and compassion (i.e. what makes you interact with the outside world) did not change. Taking DMT actually does not make you better.

What about the creativity of artists, of musicians and writers, who often produced and performed their masterpieces under the influence of the one or other drug. Wouldn’t we miss all this outcome of exaggerated states of mind without psycedelic substances?

They were learning to draw,’ the Dormouse went on, (…); ‘and they drew all manner of things–everything that begins with an M–

– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

I am very sure that someone who can produce decent art under the influence of drugs would have been able to do so even more and better in a sober state. When you can do everything that begins with an M while being high, the whole alphabet might well be at your hands when you are sober. Artists who got clean often did the better part of their work after successful rehab.

Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head

– Jefferson Airplane

Don’t forget the Dormouse in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland constantly fell asleep. Even when Alice left much embarrassed about the Hatter’s rudeness …

… the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.

– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

No, forget what the Dormouse said! You might miss Alice while she leaves, and end up in a teapot, half awake and half asleep. Go ask Alice.

–

(1) Descending The Mountain (2021)

(2) Meling D, Egger K, Aicher HD, Jareño Redondo J, Mueller J, Dornbierer J, Temperli E, Vasella EA, Caflisch L, Pfeiffer DJ, Schlomberg JT, Smallridge JW, Dornbierer DA, Scheidegger M. Meditating on psychedelics. A randomized placebo-controlled study of DMT and harmine in a mindfulness retreat. J Psychopharmacol. 2024 Oct;38(10):897-910. doi: 10.1177/02698811241282637. Epub 2024 Sep 27. PMID: 39340164; PMCID: PMC11487865.

Listening to a certain branch of Zen-practitioners, one could get the idea that the hardest thing in life is Zen, and the hardest thing in Zen is doing Zazen: sitting hour after hour with painful and numb crossed legs on a pillow facing the wall while fighting sleep and boredom. Alas, confusing Zen with Zazen, the sitting meditation, is widely supported by tradition. I am sure, as with any physical exercise, you can become pretty good at it if you practice hard enough, young enough with a healthy body. And if you overdo, you ruin your body and waste your time.

What did the Buddha say about the benefit of ascetic exercise? He totally gave up on it, after going to the extreme without experiencing any benefit. Following the legend, in the end he just sat down by a tree (what, by the way, is the historical origin of Zazen) and decided to do nothing more than just sitting around until he understood. It worked out, and after just seven days and nights he came up with his most profound teaching, a concept why life most of the time goes so wrong for us: the chain of dependent origination (Pratītyasamutpāda).

It all starts with not knowing (or not wanting to know), Avijjā (無明), and two and a half handful steps later ends with old age and death, Jarāmaraṇa (老死). For those who are into reciting Sutra, and namely the Hannya Shingyo, the Pratītyasamutpāda is referenced by its start- and final-link with the lines:

無無明 MU MU MYO
亦無無明盡 YAKU MU MU MYO JIN
乃至無老死 NAI SHI MU RO SHI
亦無老死盡 YAKU MU RO SHI JIN

The intermediate links connecting not knowing and old age and death show us how it all comes together, the misery we are in, how things interact and one leads to the other (and back). One core idea within this fundamental teaching is that contact (Phassa 觸) results in sensation (Vedanā 受) and sensation in craving (Taṇhā 愛). We all know it, we all fell for the one or other advertisement, a must-have thing, or in love.

Contact – Sensation – Craving

It works in both directions, a re-enforcing feedback-loop and btw. a possible Buddhist explanation of addiction.

Craving is connected to the next link: clinging (Upādāna 取).  After you got what you were craving for, things are even getting worse: now we have it and don’t ever want letting go. “Happy ever after” is coming to my mind, “Stay as you are” or “I will always love you” (The Cure, and countless others).

Contact – Sensation – Craving and then: Never Let It Go

This is a perfect recipe for unhappiness. It makes us feel miserable with much less effort than spending years on a pillow facing the wall, guaranteed!

Where to cut this chain leading into desaster? The traditional answer is: by avoiding contact.

When I met again after many years my old friend and brother in crime for setting up an Aikido Dojo (in spite of funding and expertise) who later became a Bhikkhu (Monk in the Teravada tradition), he refused to shake hands with my spouse, even avoided coming close to her.  No “contact” allowed, because, well, we know where it ends. And my friend was an expert, having had more affairs with women (before becoming a monk) than I ever fell in love with. I long lost contact (he couldn’t stand my loose talk on Buddhist things), in case he is still alive I imagine him sitting somewhere in the East-Asian jungle wearing his orange robes, avoiding contact.

But how to prevent getting in contact with our memories? With our hardwired physical demands?

Possibly by floating in a sensory deprivation tank after being brainwashed or sedated for a total loss of memory. Not a very desirable lifestyle, after all.

If not cut the chain at the “contact”-link, where else?

Cutting “sensation”, the next link following contact, might be achieved by austere exercise destroying all sensory perception. I imagine karate students hammering their fists into wooden boards, or kung fu masters feeling no pain when hit with a stone on their forehead or stabbed by a spear. My above mentioned friend told me of his most scary experience as a monk: after accidently cutting himself he had to see a doctor, who turned out to be a female doctor. Since avoiding contact was not possible in a situation where immediate treatment was necessary, his worst fear was to feel anything. No sensation, in spite of contact … but isn’t that close to being dead? Training to feel like a corpse long before passing away? Not my cup of tea either, I will be dead soon enough and long enough for sure, no need to speed up the inevitable process by jumping to the last link right away!

What we can actively do in a healthy way is to change how we handle craving.

Sitting under a cherry tree in full bloom with the most pleasant company enjoying delicious food it is easy talking about impermanence and letting go. Yet asking the Sakura to stay as beautiful as today for me  forever, so I can come back day after day, enjoy the sun, the warm breeze, delicious food and company? Not even tomorrow! Everything is happening just once, 一期一会 (ICHI GO ICHI E) and it will never come back.

Enjoying moment after moment to the fullest, and then let it go without remorse and longing: this is allowing and enjoying contact and sensation without clinging. Yet this is the very hardest Zen exercise of all.

Long ago, I was sitting on my pillow doing Zazen during a Sesshin in the very town my love split up with me just a week before. Very well I could compare the pain in my knees with the pain of an aching heart. Enduring hour after hour the distress of sitting cross-legged was the easy exercise, letting go the hard one.

Kazuaki Tanahashi described the Enso (Zen circle) as “miracle of the present moment”. When we paint the Enso at our Dojo, the result is always imperfect, shaky towards the end, not round and the paper ends up being recycled.

I painted thousands of Enso and none of them was perfect. I experienced dozens of times engaging in love the wrong way and none of doing it right. One day, when I am 95 or so, I want to experience the perfect love of letting go: maybe or not have the two of us meet again tomorrow, starting from scratch exploring the miracle of the present moment. When we are together, you are the love of my life. Yet we part, again and again, without constraint and remorse and nothing more than a promise: let’s try again tomorrow, let us try even better, painting once more the imperfect Enso of our present moment.

The secret of a happy life, the very link to break the chain of Pratītyasamutpāda is: try your very best, right now, and always let it go. And this, to my limited experience, is the hardest exercise in life. It is beautiful.

avenidas y flores y mujeres y
un admirador

(Eugen Gomringer)

寝るときも
枕のしたを
水のながるる

(吉井 勇 )

Auch habe ich (..) gefunden, daß alle wirklich kluge Menschen (…)  darauf kommen und bestehen: daß der Moment alles ist, und daß nur der Vorzug eines vernünftigen Menschen darin bestehe: sich so zu betragen, daß sein Leben, insofern es von ihm abhängt, die möglichste Masse von vernünftigen, glücklichen Momenten enthalte.

(Johann Woflfgang Goethe / Italienische Reise)

–

As a post scriptum, a piece I wrote a year ago under the title “Love Love Love” which I never completed into a blog post:

I wish I came across Prousts “Recherches” much earlier in my life. Not that I did not know about this masterpiece, but I cherished the stupid idea to read the 4.000+ pages, preferably in the original language, once I am old an grey. All magic and illusion, all mutual misunderstanding, projection and fantasy, all pleasure and abuse of “boy meets girl” (as well as boy meets boy and girl meets girl) is laid down in this monument of French literature. All you need to know for life … before you turn 100 years.

For too many years, instead of appreciating my various affairs as magic encounters with fascinating women, I used to see it as a never ending series of failures. Just for the one reason, that non of them lasted “forever”. It took me decades of detour through the slopes and valleys of Zen Buddhism until I began to understand that impermanence is not a flaw, a failure, but the very nature of life. Nothing lasts “forever”.

The magic of love is that it “just happens”. It is unavoidable, like the weather. Suddenly sun comes out, suddenly rain. Beautiful ever changing formations of clouds, followed by blasting sun and days after days of equally dim grey sky.  I can just be there, enjoying the play of emotion or lack of, excitement and fading interest. Yet I can never get hold of it.

I’m not sure with the term “teacher” in a Zen-Buddhist context, to begin with. It is not that there is “something” to teach, a certain skill, as in Art or Science. There is no, or very little curriculum. Yet there are those elder guys, hanging around long enough and still being kind enough to share their time and experience. If you are lucky, you might find one.

When I was younger I spent considerable time with such elder companions. Although it was not always easy, I feel grateful towards them for allowing me into their life, more or less. Most of my “teachers”, when they were younger, started a family or engaged with a partner. Actually, I don’t remember any of them was living a celibate lifestyle. So there always was some echo from their wilder (or more conventional), younger days present, in terms of a partner, and sometimes children. In Buddhist terminology, the echo from the past, or more correctly, the past deeds or actions causing certain future consequences, are called Karma.

My late Shakuhachi teacher’s wife was kind enough to serve delicious self-made cake occasionally when I came to visit him for a lesson, while his young daughter was busy with her play-station. Kobayashi Sensei, the Japanese master who’s Aikido style we practice, used to say that he always hopes his wife will not wait for him at the Airport when he comes back from Europe. I never met her, but I vividly remember once his daughter pinning me, a young beginner at the time, on the tatami during Aikido practice. I didn’t know who she was, but couldn’t believe that tiny Asian girl had such an enormous strength.

During my stay at the rural Zen-temple in Kameoka, occasionally the Master’s wife sent us some meal she had prepared for us. In the cold and harsh environment her soup and steamed vegetables appeared to me as the most delicious Japanese food I ever had, and I imagined to taste her kindness through that meal. She must have understood how hard our life in the unheated temple was. Aside from that, I only saw her once, friendly greeting us while closing the curtain at the Master’s main temple we just visited.

There is an old picture showing my former Zen- and Calligraphy teacher together with his teacher, Oomori Sogen Roshi and the Roshi’s wife, carrying a bag while walking half a step behind between both men. I don’t remember any occasion where my former teacher mentioned Oomori’s wife, or her role or activity within the nine years he was his student.

When I married at the age of 35, I told my wife that I had been told
by a person that I respect absolutely, “Even if you starve and die, do
the right thing.” I asked her if it was all right with her. She said, “If
that’s what you say, it can’t be helped.” Though she was reluctant, I
made her consent.
– Oomori Sogen, “The Art of A Zen Master” by Hosokawa Dogen.

That sounds very much a prototype Japanese relationship of that time, and it seemed she was able to keep her tremendous suffering caused by that life-style mainly to herself.

I prefer not to share questionable stories concerning my former teacher’s wife, but for sure it wasn’t primarily caused by the teacher himself most of his students, including myself left, or were made to leave. During the 13 years I worked with him, he changed town and back, opened and closed Dojos at various locations and ended up with no students and no place to work or teach. Such a pity, he was such a good person to learn from.

Past involvement, past actions cannot be undone. Karma works, merciless, and it may cause tremendous Dukkha or suffering to oneself, without any easy way out. Yet it is the decision of each of us, and the responsibility of anyone teaching others, not to pass on that Dukkha.

Dukkha niroda, the third one of the so called “Four Noble Truths” (a terribly misleading translation of the Pali term āriyasaccāni btw.) I read more as ending and cutting of the passing on of my own Dukkha to others, not so much as bringing an end to my own suffering.

No teacher was born as a teacher, no elder companion entered the world old and wise. Once you meet such a person and get to know him or her better, you might also meet or see the results of his or her past deeds and actions, the wake of a shockingly unwise and turbulent life. Don’t judge him due to past actions or how much Karma he carries on his back. But watch out carefully how much Dukkha he or she is willing to pass on to you!

Many years ago when I worked for a Japanese IT company, I remember they had a campaign for personalising their mobile-phone background design. The campaign was running under the working title “Me, Mine and Myself”. Being a proud owner of a Nokia 6150 for a couple of month at that time, I completely failed to understand what it all was about. The campaign eventually was a failure in Europe, as far as I know. Japanese technology was once more decades ahead of it’s time.

“Me, Mine and Myself” – isn’t this the ultimate source for all headache in the world? Wasn’t it the most important realisation of the person we today call the Buddha: that there is no such thing as a fixed self? Next to duhkha and anicca, he described anatta (the doctrine of non-self) as one of the three characteristics of all existence.

One thing we can truly learn when studying Buddhism, and especially when practicing Zen is that: it’s not all about Me, Mine and Myself. Less “I” makes life easier, ours, and even more the life of everyone who has to deal with us.

The other day, due to circumstances partially beyond my control, I was drawn into participating a Buddhist event. The group conducting it was very generous, welcoming everyone to join their festivity, their head monks’ Dharma Talk, Meditation and even their meal. For free. Their recently deceased head teacher called himself a Zen Master, in spite of not being related to any Japanese lineage or tradition. Zen sells, even if it is all for free.

When the event started, we all were asked to sing a song together which contained “I” ten times. We sang it 4 times (twice in German, twice in English), 40 times “I”. Followed by another song, also containing 10 times the “I”, summing up to 80 “I”s in just a couple of minutes. Eight more missing I thought …

The guided meditation following the welcome was also all about “me” … my sensation, my breath, my thoughts, my feeling in my head, my tension in my spine, my “energy” flowing down to my lower body. Not being used to constant talking while practicing mediation, the very vivid image arose in my mind of everyone constantly taking emotional selfies.

When after almost two hours we left the room, I spotted one of the deceased master’s calligraphies hanging at the wall, saying “this is it”. I couldn’t agree more, after being pumped so full with “I”. Later I had a bad night, dreaming of me, mine and myself, which resulted in that text with far too many “I”.

Maybe, this enormous emphasis on “I” and “me” is just a splendid example of upaya, the Buddhist pedagogical concept of skillful means giving everyone just the guidance to be able to understand? And what would be the best guidance for our totally self-centered selfie generation? Feed us up with even more self, so in the end we can’t stand it any more. The deceased Master must have been a genius, without doubt, drawing such a large followership and accumulating so many resources they can even generously afford welcoming someone – like me.

The other weekend we visited the Buddhism exhibition at Übersee-Museum Bremen. The focus of the exhibition was an attempt to proof that Buddhism is a religion to believe in, not something to understand. My oh my.

Was Buddhism meant to be a religion at all?

Did the person walking Indian soil more than 2.500 years ago had any intention that people over 80 generations later should worship his statue? Invent a whole pantheon of accompanying gods and spirits and mystify him as being the sheer representation of an ever lasting higher power (the existence of which, by the way, he vigorously denied)?

It starts all with a good human being, an intelligent and compassionate man or women. And it ends up with well-fed elderly men (and very few women) in expensive brocade robes who succeed to impress their followers by fairy-tales of their imagined spiritual faculty or exclusive relation to godly creatures. It is called religion.

The Zen tradition as a branch of Buddhism makes no difference, and no doubt, this is a very big misconception. A fatal misunderstanding of the initial intention, with the only positive side-effect that powerful and wealthy institutions ensured to forward the message over centuries and millennia, however distorted it may appear nowadays.

Our digital generation these days enjoys the privilege of an almost unlimited access to information. We are the first generation ever who is able to easily access whatever we want to know about anything without being dependent on the goodwill of a specific person or institution. At least, in the free parts of the world.

We have all we need at our hands to dust and clean what came down to us through centuries of Buddhist tradition. Like no generation before, we can try to reconstruct what this one person we call “Buddha” did and said, as good as possible understand his intention, no matter how this or that tradition claims to convey the true story.

We have all the material at our hands. With a bit of effort we can research by ourselves how ancient texts developed into the very Sutra we maybe chant today in our local Sangha or Dojo. We can follow the development or distortion of certain ideas through the centuries. We can see how Indian Hinduism re-infiltrated Buddhist ideas. We can study how local folk religion merged with specific lines of Buddhism, for the good or the worst.

The person who spoke of himself as the Tathagata was not a Japanese Zen Master. And he did not issue any certificates to his students (just a flower, instead of). He also had no Buddha statue to worship, though he had a particular sense of humor, often making fun of the prevalent religious believes of his time and region. As far as we can know, he did not worship any gods.

Spiritual era’s gone, it ain’t comin’ back.
Bad Religion, a copout, that is all that’s left

…

Don’t you know blind faith through lies won’t conquer it
Don’t you know responsibility is ours?
I don’t care a think about eternal fires.

Bad Religion

Said that, possibly we should not give up all tradition and rituals. It may be helpful to have a substantial and supporting practice and a strong connection to every day life, since intellectual understanding is limited to just this: intellectual understanding. It can only serve as a map, as a cooking recipe. The action of going, cooking and eating is what counts, not of studying map after map or memorizing recipe after recipe.

Let us not be intimidated on our way by titles and brocade robes, by the dust and rubble the traditions accumulated over centuries. We may well find a treasure covered by all that scrub and layers of dirt. At least as long as we take the effort to dig deep enough and don’t forget how to use our brains instead of being satisfied with just believing in a bad religion.

After participating your first Sesshin, 5 days, 120 hours, where do you consider yourself? Already a “beginner”? Already on the Zen way? Already found your teacher and practice? I doubt.

I met my Zen teacher, with whom I worked for over 13 years, did almost 50 Sesshin, when I already was teaching Aikido at my own Dojo, offering regular Zen class (for which I mistakenly felt qualified after practicing half a decade with this or that group). It took me two or three Sesshin with this teacher to realise that I was actually a beginner, not an advanced student of any sorts. After five or six years close collaboration he made me his assistant, and after about 10 years we were teaching together.

More than twenty years after my first experience practicing Zazen I opened my Zen Dojo. The opening ceremony was conducted by my teacher, who gave the Dojo (and me) a Japanese name on that occasion. I received three bowls and a certificate from him that I am permitted to teach Zen and Hitsuzendo (Zen calligraphy). I remember, the first thing I did after officially becoming a “Zen teacher” was cooking noodles for all my guests.

I know who my teacher’s teacher was, and his teacher’s teacher. After parting from my teacher, I went to study with his senior colleague in Japan, Gensho Hozumi Roshi (who later “adopted” me in the Zen tradition and gave me the name “Genko”). Similar to this Zen lineage, I can draft where my late Aikido teacher came from, or my late Shakuhachi teacher. What I am doing at my Dojo is not some kind of home brew Yoga-Zen-Esoteric stuff, maybe after reading a few books or watching a few youtube videos, or spending some short (online) time with this or that self acclaimed “master”. It is totally transparent from where it all comes, and my addition is almost negligible.

I don’t much like social media, it keeps people away from meeting in person. But hiding my Dojo too well, I was convinced by my students, is no good idea either. So this blog exists, more or less, and a page on Instagram I occasionally update. Through this, I came about a (German language) advertisement with the title “Education: Zen-Teacher”. A program is offered, that for enormous 2.800 Euro qualifies one to teach Zen after 120-200 hours of training. Alas, not much can be found about the teacher’s qualification who is conducting the program, except that he calls himself “Sifu”, which is not quite any title known in the Zen world.

Why do such things exist? I am not interested in the particular case (that is why I even don’t provide a link here), or this or that person, if he or she exists, who invests such a great amount of cash. What interests me is the phenomenon as such.

For example, you would not find a similar advert for “becoming a violin teacher in 120-200 hours”, or “becoming a professor in quantum physics in 120-200 hours”. Why do some people believe, teaching Zen is such an easy skill to learn?

If you ask a seasoned Zen practitioner or head of a Dojo, he or she might probably even let you know that it is impossible to teach Zen at all. I tend to subscribe to that position, yet, with sufficient experience and empathy, you can be a certain help for dedicated people trying to discover their very own Zen way. Hopefully. At least, I can confirm that I benefited a lot form the guidance given by my teachers.

With my closest student I spent about 1.500-2.000 hours in total after she first entered my Dojo almost four years ago. If you’d ask her if she feels qualified to perform as a Zen teacher, she would probably laugh.

Do I myself feel qualified as a teacher, after almost 30 years of practice? Often I wonder. Possibly not so much. I consider myself as a borderline case: with a fascinating and profound practice to share, but very little pedagogical enthusiasm to drive someone else in a certain direction. The more you invest in your study with me, the more you might get back. But there is no “program” to join, nothing.

“There isn’t even a menu outside !” a passer-by complained after I opened my Dojo, probably mistaking it for an Asian restaurant. I like that: we don’t have a menu to order from. But you get a chance to learn how to prepare your very own Zen dish at our Dojo. It’s not McZen.

Imagine that hermits’ life, in a cave high up in the holy mountains amongst white clouds, silently meditating the days away. Nope. There is a nice documentary about hermits living in the Zhongnan Mountains of China called “Amongst White Clouds“. You can see them struggling with every day life, hard working most of the time.

It is possibly sobering to keep in mind there is no emergency exit from daily struggles and chores towards the clouds. Between Christmas and New Year our Dojo was in the danger of being flooded, once more. I had to quickly prepare sand-bags and learn how to access and interpret upstream and downstream gauge heights published by the authorities online to predict how close the danger really is. Not to talk about carrying everything of value up to the first floor. And back down before our first Zazen in the new year.

After this was over and I wanted to write a little bit about my experience, also in the face of a much more severe disaster which struck Japan just a few days ago, I found this blog was down. Once more. After setting up the technology behind it more than ten years ago, I had to (re-)learn what it means to have an (meanwhile outdated) “Theme” operating the page, why PHP 7.4 works with it (but costs lots of extra money for “extended support”, which I was not aware of) while PHP 8.0 did not work with the old “Theme”. Updating to a “Theme” which goes well with PHP 8.0 smashed the layout of my 100+ posts. In the process of fixing it, the whole blog seemed gone … with the backup software neither working with PHP 7.4 or 8.0 .

Just little things. I imagine, in the hermitage amongst white clouds the shovel or pick-axe breaks apart. And while trying to repair the tool, some cloths rupture, while the last needle is gone. I imagine the fire gone out during a cold and windy evening, and the last box of matches got wet. There is no escape.

Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux

Albert Camus

The other day we watched a movie where the main character earns his living as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. I guess you have seen it. He seemed to have found his hermitage, a way of living, day after day, with a dirt job in the middle of a busy mega-city. The director Wim Wenders said in an interview, as blueprint for this character he had the late Leonard Cohen on his mind, cleaning the monastery toilets while living as a novice Zen monk at Mount Baldly.

From my own experience, I can confirm there is no need to travel to the other side of the world just to clean some exotic toilet. Yet, it is slightly more pleasant, and an aesthetically more satisfying experience to clean a Japanese toilet.

Do the hermits have toilets, high up amongst white clouds?

These days, due to unusual circumstances, I enjoy an abundance of spare time. Typically my schedule is packed and I cut sleep beyond healthy limits to accomplish all tasks planned for the day. That’s the way I learned through Zen practice, not wasting a second, and I took it for granted all my life. Maybe it is wrong.

Another Sunday without fixed schedule, and I can’t believe having more than twelve hours ahead I can do whatever I want. Last night I watched a movie and played Saxophone for three hours straight, it was wonderful. I have plenty of time to read and even write. Maybe later I will do a few hours calligraphy, or go for a walk. Or both. I enjoy the almost forgotten feeling of being fully awake, after long seven hours of sleep. Where have I been all these years?

When we study Hitsuzendo (Zen Calligraphy) at our Dojo, we copy the calligraphy of my former teacher’s late teacher Oomori Sogen. Sometimes we wonder why this prominent Zen master preferred to chose words conjuring up the image of hermits living high up in the cloudy mountains, or find the world in a jar. Was it escapism, his desire to flee a hectic every day life?

I don’t think so. I believe he found something, some seclusion and silence amidst being involved with a hectic post-war Tokyo. Maybe that’s why, in spite of his accomplishments and fame, he had nothing more than a small training temple with just a few students.

It is no coincidence our own Dojo is on the verge of disappearing. I too feel much drawn towards some cloudy mountain or a small fisherman’s hut at a stormy seashore. As much as I occasionally do enjoy the company of inspiring people, most free and most happy I feel when I’m on my own.

Far away from emperors and ministers

Deep in the mountain valley,
open your training place

To those who have the ability

Pass on Buddha’s teachings

Rujing Zenji (Dogen’s teacher in China)

 

For many years I felt the obligation to teach, to pass on what I had learned from my teachers, to share the gratitude I once received. “I can’t possibly keep all that locked away in my head, just for myself!” was my inspiration to open a Dojo, to offer Sesshin.

Yet, can I really dare to invite anyone to climb with me a steep mountain path, or walk along a stormy beach? “Join at your own risk” I used to think “I won’t stop and turn around to make sure you can follow!”. But that’s not fair. Shouldn’t I instead just come come back from time to time, to tell an enchanted and comfortable audience stories from mountain tops and stormy seashores, spread some old man’s gossip like so many “Zen Teachers” love to do these days? No, that sounds boring, a waste of time, mine and yours.

“You are no good teacher” some of my former students complained before they left, “you are not guiding us properly, not representing anything. We are better looking for a teacher who will take us by the hand and lead us!”. I fully agree.

My path might be too steep, too narrow, too windy to follow. Or too lazy, like today. Join at your own risk, but watch your step!

I met a man who lost his mind
In some lost place I had to find
“Follow me”, the wise man said
But he walked behind

Leonard Cohen – Teachers

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(1) “Tenzo” (2019) directed by Katsuya Tomita: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10415754/ .

I drafted this text some years ago, when I had many more students at my Dojo and did most of the chores alone. For some reason I never published it. Now we are just a few and perform all tasks together.

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What is your role within your group, your Sangha, your Dojo?

When you are new, arrive at the doorstep of a Dojo for the first time in your life, it is pretty clear. You are 初心者 “Shoshinsha”, a person with a fresh beginner’s mind. A 初心者 is nothing bad at all, not as the common English translation “beginner” might imply.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.

Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Don’t worry what the seniors or teacher at the Dojo might think of you. Never consider impressing them with some previously acquired wisdom from books or the internet. Just be polite and watch carefully, try your best to join in and all will be fine for the 初心者.

With time, to my experience, the beginners develop into two directions. Many of them are becoming the equivalent of a permanent guest. They arrive last minute, enjoy a clean Dojo and a prepared setting for their practice. They make use of every occasion for some small talk and enjoy “guiding” new members of the group. Usually they are very nice and friendly people and there is nothing wrong with them, except that I don’t really understand why they prefer to spend their leisure time at a Zen Dojo.

Some, few, soon realise it is not my task but their task to run the Dojo. To keep it clean, to bring flowers, to prepare everything for their practice. This realisation sooner or later results in the question

Can I help you?

My true and honest answer to this question is usually “No, not yet!”. Why do I say so? Why do I not explain what to do, and give the motivated 初心者 a task?

The reason is twofold: I simply have no time to name and explain the many many chores which are to perform in a Dojo. Instead, I demonstrate it myself, with my whole body and mind, every day. All you have to do to find out how you can help is: carefully watch me doing how and what I do, in which way and what order. And then do it, before I have to do it.

All I do at the Dojo I only do because there is no one who completed the task before me.

This is how I learned. I watched my teacher, and whatever I realised he is doing, next time I tried to complete before he had a chance to perform the task by himself. Of course he often had to correct me, not by words, but just by redoing what I did in a wrong way. For me, that meant watching again and doing better next time. Occasionally he also had to stop me from doing something. Understanding when to do what from morning to night, especially during a Sesshin, is not a simple task which can be learned within one or two years.

Looking back at those student years, I feel a bit embarrassed, because I thought as an assistant I helped my teacher doing his work. In reality, as I realise now, he was taking the burden upon his shoulders to teach me. Instead of quickly performing all the tasks by himself, he had to carefully observe me trying my best efforts. Always ready to jump in or correct my wrongdoings early enough before the flow of a Sesshin or seminar was interrupted. I was a bit like a student at a driving school, imagining to help his driving teacher driving the car.

After ten years or so I was more or less running our Sesshin alone, my teacher was just present in the background. I admired his ability to withdraw, to let me take his seat (literally, we changed seats in the Zendo). “I arrive 14:30 by train, only bring tooth brush and pyjama!” was his usual announcement before Sesshin during our last two or three years we spent teaching together. The rest was upon me.

When I opened my Dojo and began running Sesshin completely on my own, that was just a small and natural next step. Nothing special. Although my teacher was not my teacher any more, and he was no longer present in the same room, his presence was imagined by me all the time. It was me, but yet at the same time still him running the seminar. I even imagined hearing his voice every now and then, warning me before I did the one or other mistake.

Consequently, the first ten years working without my former teacher were mostly learning to become free of his pervasive presence in all my doing. I never imagined this would be the most demanding and difficult exercise he left for me! And even today, there is hardly one class, one Sesshin where I do not mention or quote him.

How do I look these days upon those “guests” who arrive three minutes before we are supposed to be on our cushions? I do so with 表裏なし (omoteuranashi). It sounds a bit similar to the well known お持て成し (omotenashi), which is often translated as “hospitality”, yet the 表裏なし literally means “no front and back”. By showing openly everything from all sides I perform at the Dojo and during a Sesshin, I have no hidden back, no secret ways and hidden routines.

It is never too late, even for a long term guest, to begin watching carefully …

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(1) Picture taken from https://tak-shonai.cocolog-nifty.com/crack/2016/04/post-643a.html (accessed on 5. August 2023). The coffee advertisement gets the etymological root of おもてなし (omotenashi) wrong by naming its source as 表裏なし, as the Japanese blog post points out.

“You are like a shark” she said, her beautiful eyes filling with tears, “you can’t stop moving, or you’ll suffocate and die!”, half scared that I’m almost gone, half aware she can’t stop me anyway.「馬鹿いってんなよ！」was my pretty rude reply, purposely ignoring she understood too well what was going on.

Looking back, amongst the best I used to do was moving on before things turned bad, the worst staying for too long. Not just in the most troublesome and most joyful adventure of romantic encounters and exploring the heavens of mutual physical attraction.

I left my home-town, my childhood and teenage friends. I changed my subject of research, my field of expertise end eventually even my profession. I left teachers behind and cut off with anyone who was stealing my time or energy. I gave up believes and convictions, ways of looking at people and the world, stopped doing things I “always” used to do. Not because I wanted to, often not even because I decided to do so for the one or other good reason. Staying with what felt wrong gave me such physical and emotional discomfort that I almost couldn’t breathe. I had to move on … like a shark, who never stops moving. My wise friend with the beautiful eyes was probably right.

In Buddhism we often talk of “impermanence” (anicca in Pali, 無常, MUJO in Japanese). Intellectually understanding impermanence is no big deal: absolutely everything is always changing. Fully accepting this as the underlying structure of our whole life is yet a different challenge. Just for the ease of understanding, let’s stick with the Mating Game: “Stay as sweet as you are” (Nat “King” Cole), “Stay with me” (Sam Smith), “Don’t change on me” (Alan Jackson) sounds the plea of (mostly male) love-songs, not to anyone’s surprise followed by “Why did she have to leave me?” (The Temptations) and “Baby, please come back” (Eminem & 2Pac).

While scuttling around in the shallows of couple counseling, some more mainstream pop wisdom on accepting impermanence, “Let it be!” (The Beatles) and the Nobel Price awarded “Don’t think twice it’s all right” (Bob Dylan), is probably the better advice for soon to be (or far too often) broken hearts:

You’re the reason I’m a-traveling on (…)

Where I’m bound, I can’t tell
Goodbye’s too good a word (…)

You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

“Don’t Think Twice it’s All Right” (Bob Dylan)

When being in contact with the world, when enjoying sensual pleasures, craving for and eventually clinging to what is constantly changing can cause tremendous pain. The whole chain was explained many times and in various detail by the Buddha as Pratītyasamutpāda (dependent arising).

Sometimes, though, I doubt. I turn around to see again past friends, teachers or even a love I left behind for good, and almost always I deeply regret coming back. The most painful insight Buddhism and Thermodynamics have in common is that the Arrow of Time cannot be reversed. What we call 無常 (MUJO) within Japanese Zen is almost equivalent to the Second Law of Thermodynamics in modern Physics. Entropy tends to increase over time, with the most surprising and beautiful but ephemeral local exception we call “life”.

How should we live our life, embracing 無常? Where to cut the chain leading to suffering?

I tend to disagree with my old friend A who became a Bhikkhu (monk) in the Theravada tradition many years ago. He decided to strictly follow his adopted believes and avoids contact with everything (and everyone) that might provide him with feeling and sensual pleasure.

Different from his approach, I prefer to endure the craving as an integral part of human life in the face of impermanence, of fully being in contact with the world. Leonhard Cohen is probably right, there “Ain’t no cure for love”. Yet, by any means, it is crucial to avoid clinging to what one cannot get hold of anyway. “Always Let Me Go“ (Keith Jarret) is not just closer to my taste of music than any love song, it conveys a deep understanding of how to to deal with impermanence.

How to live a life, when everything is on the move and beyond our control anyway? Shouldn’t we just give up and let it flow? Why to engage with a certain practice or Way (道, DO)?

「転石苔を生ぜず」（てんせきこけをしょうぜず）, a rolling stone gathers no moss) is a well known Japanese proverb, emphasizing you should stick with whatever you do for a long time to mature. Just jumping around makes you a jack of all trades, a beginner in thousand arts and subjects.

「歩々清風起」 (ほほせいふうおこる) is yet another Japanese proverb from the Zen tradition. It translates “Step after step, fresh wind arises”. A cool fresh breeze comes by itself, as long as you move on. For our Dojo’s art collection I recently acquired a beautiful scroll 「歩々清風起」written by my former teacher’s late teacher Oomori Sogen (大森曹玄).

This calligraphy brings me to full circle of “should I leave or should I stay ?” Was I meant to becoming the stone collecting moss, or made for enjoying a fresh breeze while moving on? Is this even a contradiction, an either-or question?

I left my former Zen- and Calligraphy teacher more than a decade ago, after thirteen years of being his dedicated student, but I still practice in the tradition of his lineage, of the past masters Tesshu Yamaoka and Oomori Sogen. I will do so as long as I can hold a brush.

I left my first Aikido teacher after only 3 years, while I was still a University student, and the following decades I engaged with lots of different styles, martial arts and teachers. But I still practice Aikido in the style I first encountered, the Aikido of the late Kobayashi Hirokazu. I hope to one day exhaust my last breath while flying across the tatami.

I left many friends and lovers behind (and many more left me behind), but I never get tired exploring the fascinating miracle of being with someone who is not boring, who does not waste my time. We might even fall in love, without intention … but promise you will leave, not die!

Juliet: Wilt thou be gone? It is not near day;
It was the nightingale, and not the lark (…)

Romeo: It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale. (…)
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act III Scene V