Janwillem van de Wetering - Japanese Zen

[Reefs]

Mar 10, 2020 9:56:45 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

For some reason sensei kind of adopted me. I spent a lot of time out with him, dining out mostly. He even invited me to come live in the Zen Temple. I declined, but he gave me the keys to the place anyways.

That's pretty cool. Jan was very grateful that the ZM let him live there. The ZM was already quite old and suffered from Parkinsons. Jan liked him a lot. The ZM seemed to like Jan a lot, too. Here's a funny passage I just came across in the third book:

Roshi treated me respectfully, accepting me as a genuine seeker. He joked around, too. One early morning, he climbed down from his cushions, prostrated his aching body in front of me, and addressed me as Jan-Buddha: “What, Jan-Buddha, are you looking so gloomy about?” At another occasion he laughed and said, “You are like a fish in the ocean complaining of thirst.” He insisted that I already, in my true being, knew everything, was everything, was in need of nothing.

“But I am in need of you giving me that ‘nothing,’ sir,” I commented, remembering I had read that the Buddhist base is the Void, nothing. I thought I would like to experience that nothing. I wanted him to take me there. I liked that idea: aiming for, eventually reaching, total emptiness. It somehow made me think of Harley-Davidsons and naked women.

Roshi told me not to hold on to nothing, either. “Be what you are already, Jan-Buddha—free, free even of nothing.”
“Let go. Let go!” He tumbled about on his platform, letting go of emptiness too, looking exuberant, clapping his hands.

This is dangerous talk. Zen students, driven crazy by their teachers’ urging to “let go,” have stepped off bridges and buildings to jump into their deaths, but I think Roshi believed I wouldn’t embarrass him by making a terminal spectacle of his disciple. “I’ll see what I can do for you,” I said. He thought that was funny. “Do some zazen for me, then show me your freedom. Let go, Jan-Buddha.”

Janwillem van de Wetering, Afterzen, Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear, Chapter 3

So, Zeniac-Buddha, what sayeth thou?! 

I think true teachers really care but at the same time it's impossible to disappoint them either. When Jan decided to call it quits in Japan, he already lived with Peter. Peter being his supervisor so to speak. Peter tried to talk him out of it and got very upset. But the ZM wasn't. He probably saw that coming anyway. So he let Jan-Buddha go on the spot. No regrets (I already posted a quote).

[Deleted]

Mar 15, 2020 11:39:50 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Mar 15, 2020 9:20:31 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

The point of telling us enlightenment is a joke or bs is to end grasping. Zen is all about the preparation and letting go of the goal, at least Soto.

I see it a bit differently. Think about it, did you choose to become a seeker? If you did, then you should be able to end it, too. If you didn't, then you can't. And if you can't, all you can do is let it run its course. Sometimes it seems to me that the Zen approach is all about trying to accelerate this natural process, pedal to the metal so to speak, in order to bring it to a head at all costs. Or at least some people who get involved with Zen seem to think that way.

Jan had some interesting thoughts on this:

Another disciple arrived, a tall man, some thirty years old, who looked as if he had been put together in a hurry [...] he seemed very familiar as if we had been to school together, and I meant to make contact with him later. I felt that a meeting might be very fruitful, might clarify some of the many riddles.

Riddles, I thought despondently, too many riddles. He is plunging his way through them, and so am I. He looks as bewildered as I must look to others. And yet we share the same arrogance, for he must be as determined as I am to reach “the other shore.” I stopped my thoughts at the word “arrogance.” Perhaps I had found a clue. To strive for something, no matter what it is, is egocentric behavior. To strive means to grab. Perhaps I shouldn’t grab.

The old teacher had told me about the man under the apple tree. First he grabbed at the apples and every now and then he would get one, but they were small and they were crushed in his hand. Then he changed his attitude. He just stood under the tree and stopped jumping. He merely held up his hands and when the apples were ripe they fell into his hands, and there were so many apples that he didn’t know what to do with them and gave them away.

“So I must wait,” I thought, “like I am waiting here in the snow. And while I am waiting I can do the best I can.”
Buddhism indicates the possibility of many lives, a sea of illusionary time. Whatever it is I want will come, when it wants to come. All I have to do is be there when it comes. And then I can give it away.

Sure, I thought. Very nice. But meanwhile there is the urgency of the koans. Whenever I pass one there is another. An endless supply of riddles, all to be solved on the spot. Peter doesn’t approve of his disciples hanging about patiently waiting.

Janwillem van de Wetering, A Glimpse of Nothingness: Experiences in an American Zen Community, Chapter 10

In the Soto view if there is enlightenment it is gradual. If you dot every "i" and cross every "t," the goal takes care of itself. The focus is not the goal but the process. Whether it takes twenty years or a hundred life times, doesn't matter. Rinzai might be a different cup of tea. 

[Deleted]

Mar 15, 2020 11:49:28 GMT -5 laughter said:

Mar 15, 2020 9:20:31 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

The point of telling us enlightenment is a joke or bs is to end grasping. Zen is all about the preparation and letting go of the goal, at least Soto. Rinzai, well, those cats are wacked, just look at ZD.😁😁

Really? A jest that is cosmic in proportions is .. well .. kinda' hilarious.

Are you seriously telling me that what is posted here is more important than sitting? Speaking of hilarious!! 😁

[laughter]

Mar 15, 2020 14:59:01 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

Mar 15, 2020 11:49:28 GMT -5 laughter said:

Really? A jest that is cosmic in proportions is .. well .. kinda' hilarious.

Are you seriously telling me that what is posted here is more important than sitting? Speaking of hilarious!! 😁

Uhm. No.

And that's not to imply that I'm saying the opposite either: that sitting is more important than pointing. Nor would I deny that from a limited, personal perspective, the flip side of comedy is tragedy.

[Deleted]

Mar 15, 2020 12:36:15 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Mar 10, 2020 9:56:45 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

For some reason sensei kind of adopted me. I spent a lot of time out with him, dining out mostly. He even invited me to come live in the Zen Temple. I declined, but he gave me the keys to the place anyways.

That's pretty cool. Jan was very grateful that the ZM let him live there. The ZM was already quite old and suffered from Parkinsons. Jan liked him a lot. The ZM seemed to like Jan a lot, too. Here's a funny passage I just came across in the third book:

Roshi treated me respectfully, accepting me as a genuine seeker. He joked around, too. One early morning, he climbed down from his cushions, prostrated his aching body in front of me, and addressed me as Jan-Buddha: “What, Jan-Buddha, are you looking so gloomy about?” At another occasion he laughed and said, “You are like a fish in the ocean complaining of thirst.” He insisted that I already, in my true being, knew everything, was everything, was in need of nothing.

“But I am in need of you giving me that ‘nothing,’ sir,” I commented, remembering I had read that the Buddhist base is the Void, nothing. I thought I would like to experience that nothing. I wanted him to take me there. I liked that idea: aiming for, eventually reaching, total emptiness. It somehow made me think of Harley-Davidsons and naked women.

Roshi told me not to hold on to nothing, either. “Be what you are already, Jan-Buddha—free, free even of nothing.”
“Let go. Let go!” He tumbled about on his platform, letting go of emptiness too, looking exuberant, clapping his hands.

This is dangerous talk. Zen students, driven crazy by their teachers’ urging to “let go,” have stepped off bridges and buildings to jump into their deaths, but I think Roshi believed I wouldn’t embarrass him by making a terminal spectacle of his disciple. “I’ll see what I can do for you,” I said. He thought that was funny. “Do some zazen for me, then show me your freedom. Let go, Jan-Buddha.”

Janwillem van de Wetering, Afterzen, Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear, Chapter 3

So, Zeniac-Buddha, what sayeth thou?! 

I think true teachers really care but at the same time it's impossible to disappoint them either. When Jan decided to call it quits in Japan, he already lived with Peter. Peter being his supervisor so to speak. Peter tried to talk him out of it and got very upset. But the ZM wasn't. He probably saw that coming anyway. So he let Jan-Buddha go on the spot. No regrets (I already posted a quote).

I'm thinking of naked women on Harleys. What else?

[Deleted]

Mar 16, 2020 0:22:43 GMT -5 laughter said:

Mar 15, 2020 14:59:01 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

Are you seriously telling me that what is posted here is more important than sitting? Speaking of hilarious!! 😁

Uhm. No.

And that's not to imply that I'm saying the opposite either: that sitting is more important than pointing. Nor would I deny that from a limited, personal perspective, the flip side of comedy is tragedy.

Dogmatic ambiguity. 😁

(*** Prepares for muttley attack by assuming black cat stance ***)

[Reefs]

Mar 16, 2020 8:51:24 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

I'm thinking of naked women on Harleys. What else?

Don't you have a koan to work on?

[Reefs]

Mar 15, 2020 14:49:29 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

Mar 15, 2020 11:39:50 GMT -5 Reefs said:

I see it a bit differently. Think about it, did you choose to become a seeker? If you did, then you should be able to end it, too. If you didn't, then you can't. And if you can't, all you can do is let it run its course. Sometimes it seems to me that the Zen approach is all about trying to accelerate this natural process, pedal to the metal so to speak, in order to bring it to a head at all costs. Or at least some people who get involved with Zen seem to think that way.

Jan had some interesting thoughts on this:

In the Soto view if there is enlightenment it is gradual. If you dot every "i" and cross every "t," the goal takes care of itself. The focus is not the goal but the process. Whether it takes twenty years or a hundred life times, doesn't matter. Rinzai might be a different cup of tea. 

To me the difference between Soto and Rinzai always seemed a bit of an artificial divide. And as Jan explained, koans are useful when working with highly intellectual types. But there seems to be a bit of a risk involved when people use the number of solved koans as a measuring stick for their actual level of understanding. The curious case of 'Bobbie-san' in Jan's third book comes to mind here. I'll write about that some time later. It's a bit of a cautionary tale.

[Reefs]

Sanzen

Sanzen (参禅), aka nisnutssu (入室), means going to a Zen master for instruction. In the Rinzai school, it has the same meaning as dokusan, which is specifically a private interview between student and master, often centering on the student's grasp of an assigned koan. If the master rings a bell to dismiss the student, this means the student's understanding is not right and that their work with the koan must continue. It is typically held twice a day in a monastery, though during a week-long sesshin sanzen may take place as often as four times in one day.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanzen

A sanzen to remember:

We entered the house and knelt in the sitting room. Upstairs, in the sanzen-room, the small handbell of the master called the first disciple. My turn came.

You kneel down.
The master looks at you.
You state your koan.
The master keeps looking at you. The silence becomes tangible, you can hear the silence.
Tension mounts, very quickly.
And then, for the first time, you are very close to him. There is no distance.
You say nothing, the master asks nothing. Who or what you are is paper-thin. The veil is torn.
The master smiles.
The silence continues and then he gives you the next koan.
You have a new question and you are in another world.
For a very short moment.
Later you will know that you have been there.

Janwillem van de Wetering, A Glimpse of Nothingness: Experiences in an American Zen Community, Chapter 5

[Shawn]

He was kind enough to write a few lines about my film Closer than Close which I sent him out of the blue back in 2006. Seemed like a really decent guy.

[Reefs]

Mar 28, 2020 21:28:29 GMT -5 Shawn said:

He was kind enough to write a few lines about my film Closer than Close which I sent him out of the blue back in 2006. Seemed like a really decent guy.

That's my impression as well. And he had a good sense of humor, too.

[Reefs]

Baba:

Jan once met an interesting Indian guy. He calls him Baba in the book. Baba originally came to America as an illegal immigrant. And while he was clearing tables at an airport restaurant in the 1970s, he noticed that some of his fellow countrymen who arrived in guru gown were treated like pop stars. They were greeted by beautiful women at the airport, had their own cars and seemed to live in luxury. So Baba thought, I can have that, too. So he switched careers and became a guru. Long story short, he got what he wanted, but he noticed after a while that he wasn't really in it for money and women, so he went from luxury car back to bicycle. It seems he had learned his lessons after all. Back to simplicity and common sense:

Koans are vastly overrated. A Hindu teacher, whom I will call Baba, an Indian (from India) in whites whom I met at the Boston airport during a long snowbound wait, told me that. But then he might have been overrated himself. There’s a lot of competition in religion. Jealousy too. Jealousy is a fact of life.

“Given the reputation of Zen, I had really expected a little more.” I had to laugh. Meditation, Baba told me, is not all it’s cracked up to be. When overdone it gives you a pain in the ass. Had I noticed?

I had. Prolonged zazen gave me chronic hemorrhoids. Baba told me the human body is not designed to sit in the double or even the half lotus position for long periods of time. The postures put excessive strain on the rectum. I found that easy to believe. Preparation H is a staple in Zen monasteries, together with Maalox, for eating too hot meals too fast, peer pressure by zealots, too little sleep, and the relentless master’s constant urging to solve a koan create mental tensions that ulcerate Zen stomachs.

“Right,” Baba said. “Forget all that. Your own precious Buddha told his disciples to walk the middle way, to avoid excess.”

“No spiritual practice?”

“Just daily life,” Baba said. “Apply some awareness. Take daily time to perform a short ritual of your choice, but mostly just be, my friend.”

He dropped his voice and stared at me hypnotically. “Just be.”


Janwillem van de Wetering, Afterzen, Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear, Chapter 1

[Reefs]

Funny Zen story...

Traditionally Zen monasteries will only admit wandering Zen monks if they can show proof of having solved a koan.

It seems that a monk once knocked on a monastery gate. The monk who opened the gate didn’t say “Hello” or “Good morning”, but “Show me your original face, the face you had before your father and mother were born.” The monk who wanted a room for the night smiled, pulled a sandal off his foot and hit his questioner in the face with it. The other monk stepped back, bowed respectfully and bade the visitor welcome. After dinner host and guest started a conversation, and the host complimented his guest on his splendid answer.

“Do you yourself know the answer to the koan you gave me?” the guest asked.

“No,” answered the host, “but I knew that your answer was right. You didn’t hesitate for a moment. It came out quite spontaneously. It agreed exactly with everything I have ever heard or read about Zen.”

The guest didn’t say anything, and sipped his tea. Suddenly the host became suspicious. There was something in the face of his guest which he didn’t like.

“You do know the answer, don’t you?” he asked.

The guest began to laugh and finally rolled over on the mat with mirth. “No, reverend brother,” he said, “but I too have read a lot and heard a lot about Zen.”


Janwillem van de Wetering, The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery, Chapter 16

[stardustpilgrim]

Apr 9, 2020 9:24:34 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Funny Zen story...

Traditionally Zen monasteries will only admit wandering Zen monks if they can show proof of having solved a koan.

It seems that a monk once knocked on a monastery gate. The monk who opened the gate didn’t say “Hello” or “Good morning”, but “Show me your original face, the face you had before your father and mother were born.” The monk who wanted a room for the night smiled, pulled a sandal off his foot and hit his questioner in the face with it. The other monk stepped back, bowed respectfully and bade the visitor welcome. After dinner host and guest started a conversation, and the host complimented his guest on his splendid answer.

“Do you yourself know the answer to the koan you gave me?” the guest asked.

“No,” answered the host, “but I knew that your answer was right. You didn’t hesitate for a moment. It came out quite spontaneously. It agreed exactly with everything I have ever heard or read about Zen.”

The guest didn’t say anything, and sipped his tea. Suddenly the host became suspicious. There was something in the face of his guest which he didn’t like.

“You do know the answer, don’t you?” he asked.

The guest began to laugh and finally rolled over on the mat with mirth. “No, reverend brother,” he said, “but I too have read a lot and heard a lot about Zen.”


Janwillem van de Wetering, The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery, Chapter 16

: )

[stardustpilgrim]

Mar 17, 2020 7:43:32 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Mar 16, 2020 8:51:24 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

I'm thinking of naked women on Harleys. What else?

Don't you have a koan to work on?

What is the sound of a naked woman on a Harley?