Janwillem van de Wetering - Japanese Zen

[Reefs]

Apr 9, 2020 17:59:18 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

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

Don't you have a koan to work on?

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

Hmm... let me think...

[Reefs]

More from Baba...

I was beginning to like Baba. He seemed to be a master of the Far Eastern method of negation. Neti, neti. That what is not. Destroy all constructions, then enjoy empty space. “You have a temple?” I asked.

He had one, in the Catskills, but advised that there was not much there for me. I should make use of my present lack of status. Why get interested in yet another inflicted discipline? Baba, at his spiritual center, was merely keeping people busy by providing them with a nonharmful routine, such as limited meditation and chanting of scripture. The place was partly run as a farm so there was work to help deal with depression and stress. Rules were structured to keep disciples upright. Everyone was to wear white dhotis and jackets and open-toed sandals while on the grounds (most disciples came for the weekend, sometimes also for “training weeks”). There was to be no frolicking with any abusable substance, no guitar music after hours, no dillydallying except for those with guru or guru-escort status, no excessive donations to buy being-teacher’s-pet, and during farewell ceremonies (in private, when disciples left the center to go home for a while) he would hand out praise and cookies.

“Chocolate chip,” Baba said. “Don’t care for them myself, but Americans associate them with parental loving guidance. British disciples I give digestive biscuits.”

“You bake your presents yourself?”

Baba bought them at Stop & Shop.


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

Looks like Baba got it. Unlike some of the zen zealots Jan encountered, and who - it seems - got lost in the formalities of their tradition, Baba's common sense attitude made him realize the real value of these rules and rituals. A bit like Niz, maybe, who kept his routine until the end, even though, from the SR perspective, there was no reason for that. But there obviously were practical reasons. 

[Reefs]

Bobbie-san

When Jan lived in Maine, he got a visit from a Zen monk. At first, Jan thought his visitor was Japanese because he dressed like one and behaved like one. As it turned out, he was actually an American who spent many years in a Zen temple in Nagasaki and somehow managed to totally blend in with the Japanese culture. Jan writes:

Bobbie-san stayed in my studio for a while. I was elated. Here was what I had longed to become long ago, a fully trained, fully enlightened, bilingual, bicultured Western Zen monk. My hero. Maitreya himself, the legendary future Buddha.
Bobbie-san had completed his koan study, had done his umpteen years in sodo and zendo training, had weathered all upheavals the tough Nagasaki zendo had devised to test his endurance, insight, egolessness, so why doubt any of this magnificent status?

It took a few days of chopping wood in my backyard, fertilizing the broccoli patch, harvesting mussels on the shore of the cove my land overlooks, discussing the finer points of Maitreya’s mission, before Bobbie-san jumped up from his cushion, one quiet evening in front of the fireplace where three sticks of “summer wood” (which is what Mainers call alder) burned spectacularly, shook me by the shoulders, looked into my eyes, and whispered fiercely, “It’s all bullshit, you fool!”

“These days,” Bobbie said, “any self-respecting Zen teacher has to have his white disciple. Americans are particularly popular […] The Japanese contemporary point was that only Japanese masters know the meaning of nonmeaning, the sound of silence, and the location of the mustard jar that Abraham found. However, these masters were willing to share. They were passing their enlightenment to Bobbies. It was a Buddhist new-age thing, this insistence on having a white disciple. It was a fad, Bobbie claimed. He, Bobbie, had been declared to be the most perfect white disciple around, which gave his teacher a lot of face.

Bobbie, Harvard graduate, who came with an IQ in the high hundreds, had picked up Japanese so well that Nagasaki folks thought he was one of them and summoned their protective spirits when they were told he was a green-eyed demon. “You know how many kanji, Japanese characters, I know” Bobbie-san asked me. “No? All of them. You know how many sutras, Buddhist scripture, I can chant in formalized classic Chinese? All of them, too. You know how much lay folks pay to have me perform the rites at their home altars? Up to a thousand dollars.”

He made me think of the man at the top of the pole, another koan that Sensei had me break my brain on. Top of the pole, but I hadn’t got there yet. Bobbie-san evidently had. His teacher kept telling him “You’re there, you’ve done it, but you’re too young. You have to be my private attendant, hang out with me, learn the practice now that you have the theory—soon I’ll launch you on your career.” Top of the pole? Some famous commentary says, “Take the next step.” That’s what I finally came up with too.

Janwillem van de Wetering, Afterzen, Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear, Chapter 4

[laughter]

Apr 29, 2020 10:56:40 GMT -5 Reefs said:

He made me think of the man at the top of the pole, another koan that Sensei had me break my brain on. Top of the pole, but I hadn’t got there yet. Bobbie-san evidently had. His teacher kept telling him “You’re there, you’ve done it, but you’re too young. You have to be my private attendant, hang out with me, learn the practice now that you have the theory—soon I’ll launch you on your career.” Top of the pole? Some famous commentary says, “Take the next step.” That’s what I finally came up with too.

Janwillem van de Wetering, Afterzen, Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear, Chapter 4

That's the koan that Albert Low named one of his books after. Google doesn't produce any sort of connection between those two. Any mention of Jan ever going to Montreal? That's the closest big city to Maine, and that's were Al lived for many years.

[Reefs]

Apr 29, 2020 21:56:16 GMT -5 laughter said:

Apr 29, 2020 10:56:40 GMT -5 Reefs said:

That's the koan that Albert Low named one of his books after. Google doesn't produce any sort of connection between those two. Any mention of Jan ever going to Montreal? That's the closest big city to Maine, and that's were Al lived for many years.

No, haven't seen him mentioning Low. Jan tends to conceal the identity of his characters. He usually just works with nicknames, like Rimpoche, Sensei, Bobbie-san or Baba.

Anyway, there's a lot more to the Bobbie-san story. Bobbie-san, having mastered all the formalities of traditional Zen training suddenly had a rude awaking. He suddenly realized that while diligently trying to dot all the I's and cross all the T's over so many years of intense formal Zen training, he didn't realize that he actually got lost in mere formalities and that after all these years, he still understood nothing. And what was even worse, his master also didn't realize that Bobbie-san hadn't understood anything. Which could only mean that his master also still understood nothing. It happened during a Zen congress in Tokyo. Planes and trains had been delayed due to bad weather. Most of the ZM's and their acolytes had been late. Additionally, the hotel mixed up some bookings. It was total chaos. The ZM's, being used to royal treatment and a serene monastery environment, got irritable. When they wanted to call home, phones started malfunctioning and all got the wrong number and the wrong people in the wrong temple.

For Bobbie-san, who considered ZM's to be holy men, watching sixty of these folks totally out of control in a Tokyo hotel lobby, was just too much. He had a nervous breakdown. When he regained consciousness, his spirit was shaken. He was suddenly having serious doubts about his realization status. He had to admit to himself that after all these years he had not yet attained any true insight.

Jan writes:

His teacher insisted that Bobbie-san had found the real thing. Fifty-nine other Zen teachers backed up the verdict. Sixty Zen masters have got to be right. They had all walked the way themselves. Finish koan study and the pupil is done and only needs to be confirmed as a master. A mere formality that Bobbie-san’s teacher would perform in due time. What was this sudden doubting? So Bobbie-san had a bit of an upset in the Tokyo hotel— happens to the best of saints. Listen to your betters. Stick with tradition. Wear your Zen bib and shave your skull. Chant the sutras.

“So what are you doing now?” I asked my guest.

Bobbie-san had been asked to leave the temple when he’d refused to be confirmed as a teacher to be sent into the world with the blessing of his master. He was traveling now. Checking things out. Looking at options.

Bobbie-san said he might grow his hair and dress in jeans and a jacket for a while. Zen priests can do that when they feel they need a different experience “to flesh out their insights.” Zen priests aren’t sworn to celibacy, either. Bobbie planned to rent a Toyota Land Cruiser for his sabbatical, tour Japan, stay at inns, look around, meet some women.

"Get away from Manjusri, the disciplinary deity, embrace Kwannon, goddess of compassion. Take the next step. Get off my hundred-foot pole.”

Janwillem van de Wetering, Afterzen, Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear, Chapter 4

So basically, despite having completed koan practice and formal Zen training with summa cum laude and having his understanding confirmed by 60 Zen masters, in reality, Bobbie-san had not even taken the first step (as McKenna calls it) until that fateful day when he collapsed in that hotel lobby.

[Reefs]

Death of a Zen Master

Jan and Bobbie-san met again in Maine, at Jan's house, some 20 years later. After Bobbie-san had been on his own for a while, he was suddenly invited back to Japan again. Jan writes:

Bobbie-san had been literally pushed out of the monastic gate for refusing to be his master’s spiritual heir, but time heals even Zen-inflicted wounds and after ten years there had been a reconciliation. The old abbot was about to celebrate forty years as a teacher. His heirs and students, including Bobbie-san, came to the mother temple. The buildings had been cleaned and redecorated. Choirs chanted sutras. Dancing priests performed elaborate rituals. Incense smoldered everywhere. The current class of monks had pulled every last weed from the moss gardens. Giant golden carp swam between the water lilies in cleaned ponds. Windows and doors were repapered. Paths were raked. All the lay supporters of the temple came with their families, most of the women in colorful clothes to suit the occasion. There were lots of little kids. Dignitaries, both clerics and government officials, delivered congratulatory speeches. The cooks had prepared the vegetarian foods that are the fame of Zen kitchens. There was plenty of sake.

Most priests were aware that the master had a drinking problem, which had been getting worse over the years, but because of all the revelry no one was paying attention. Suddenly, the master’s quavering voice, amplified by a powerful sound system donated by one of the great electronic corporations, reached every corner of all the Zen buildings, gardens, and yards. “I want to get m-a-a-a-a-a-r-rrried,” the master was chanting. After that he sobbed loudly.

"No!” I tried to cover my ears and eyes simultaneously.

Yes. The old drunk felt lonely, Bobbie-san told me. Zen masters can marry, but those who choose to become monastic teachers usually do not. The sex drive, Bobbie assured me, does not get sublimated spiritually, as religious textbooks claim. Sexual longing is programmed into human genes; frustrate it and it becomes demonic. Twisted devils bide their chance to get out in the open. The master’s demons kicked down the door of their cell at the great jubilee party. There was the party-pig sage; clutching his microphone, keeping up his wailing and sobbing while his monks rushed about trying to switch off the loudspeakers.

No! I was still covering my eyes. This was as bad as the Zen archer I had seen on Dutch TV, a Japanese archery-adept in robes, bowing, kneeling, dancing, praying before he pulled his bow’s string and had his arrow miss the target completely. Colleagues in the Amsterdam constabulary saw that show. “Wasn’t that what you studied in Japan? Zen? Is that why you are bad at pistol practice?”

Bobbie-san’s low voice kept extending the plot line of the Nagasaki jubilee party. The master was taken to his quarters and kept there, supervised by strong monks, until he sobered up. A committee of high priests faced him a few days later. “No more drinking.” The master slipped a few times and was institutionalized for a while. Declared sane and sound, he returned. Monastic training started up again.

Janwillem van de Wetering, Afterzen, Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear, Chapter 15

As usual, after early morning meditation, at 4 AM, the monks started lining up to see the master in the sanzen room. Waiting for the sound of the masters little bell. But nothing happened. The monks were patiently kneeling on the hard floor. Their legs began to hurt. They thought the master was trying to teach them a lesson, testing them, probably trying to break their egos. No one dared to move or make a sound. Finally, the cook got suspicious. Something wasn't right. He asks the head monk to take a look. The head monk doesn't dare to break protocol. The cook insists. The head monk hesitates, but eventually gets up and walks to the sanzen room, kneels down and faces the little platform where the master sits. But the cushion on the little platform is empty. As he starts looking around, he sees the master hanging on a rope above him, naked. After they cut down the master's body from the ceiling, they found a calligraphy, that only showed one single Chinese character - dreams. That was the master's farewell message.

[Reefs]

Rimpoche (1)

Jan had a friend, a young Tibetan monk (Dazi-Kawa) who fled China and lived with him in Amsterdam for a while until he had figured out how to live and survive in the West on his own. He taught Jan a lot about Tibetan culture and when Jan heard of a Tibetan Lama having opened an ashram in the UK, he got curious and went to see him. Jan writes:

This was the sixties. England still had trains pulled by coal-burning locomotives, and waiters in railway uniforms came around pouring hot tea, sugar and milk already mixed in, from dented kettles into chipped mugs. The Tibetan temple was in Scotland, in a converted mansion originally owned by a single and childless nobleman, a former sahib, feeling sorry for having exploited the Far East, who had willed it to the Buddhist cause.

Dazi-Kawa, trained along strict lines in the rigid Potala, was upset by what he called “sloppy routine” at the young Living Buddha’s temple, and left, after a few days, to be with the British superstar he had met in Amsterdam and would soon be serving in her villa outside London. Before leaving the Scottish/Tibetan retreat he told me I had come to the wrong place. Dazi had bristled whenever he was with Rimpoche but I liked the abbot, a well-built, majestically robed presence in his late twenties, with a bittersweet orange complexion and “angel” eyes that reminded me of the singing cowboy Roy Rogers’ musical gaze. Women loved the mere sight of Rimpoche. Men were also attracted by his powerful aura.

Rimpoche received me in a large room lavishly furnished with oriental rugs and gilded altars. There were no seats, so I knelt. “You’re comfortable?” Rimpoche asked. I told him that I was used to being uncomfortable by now, after zazen practice. He asked me questions about Zen training in Japan. I soon realized that he knew more about koans than I would ever know and that he only seemed curious in order to lure me out. What was I doing at his temple? I said I was trying to “walk the way.” He smiled. “How interesting.” Rimpoche spoke impeccable English, learned, I heard later, at a choice British university in a remarkably short time. He had also obtained degrees in art, philosophy, and religion. As a recognized incarnation of a fully enlightened spirit, he had apparently equipped himself with a brilliant mind. Rimpoche had a boyish grin and a pleasant voice. “Do you have a particular personal problem? You are looking for a solution? You want me to help out?”

I thought of the “father of surrealism,” Marcel Duchamp, photographs of whose work I kept on the walls of my study at home. “There is no solution, for there is no problem,” Daddy of Dada said. I didn’t quote Duchamp, although I thought, and still think, that his answer was correct, that there really never was a problem and that the so-called solution is only required when looking at things through the distortion of ego. Things are just fine, only our selfishness makes them wrong. I usually fully believe that, until I see a dog on a short chain or a baby seal wailing for his lost mother. Horrors like that start me rethinking my position. “There is no problem?” I ask my distorted ego. “Tell it to the dog, sweating on a hot porch, short on water.”

I told the recognized incarnation, squatting behind his red lacquered table, that I had no personal problem worth discussing. I would just like to know for sure.
“Know what?”
“That there is no purpose.”
“You believe there is no purpose?”
“I would like to know for sure there is no purpose.”
“Why would you like that?”
“Because, if there were a purpose, it would all be too unacceptable.”
“Unacceptable like what?”
“Well,” I said, “like the Chinese genocide of your people.”
He shook his head. “Tibet is finished.” His eyes were sad, but the smile was the same as the smile on the black Buddha’s face behind him, expressing, it seemed to me, not acceptance but beyond-acceptance.

Janwillem van de Wetering, Afterzen, Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear, Chapter 14

[Reefs]

Rimpoche (2)

Rimpoche had a few students who were sent into the woods, for intensive spiritual training. They were mostly left alone there for at least a month. Jan, by accident, discovered one of those students, Tom, who had been somewhat neglected by Rimpoche. He was supposed to regularly get food and water, but somehow they forgot about him...

I had missed Rimpoche at the morning meditation in the main temple room. Maybe he was ill? Tom didn’t think so. “Partying,” Tom told me. “He does a lot of that. He has friends in the village. Girlfriends, too. Here and there.”

Later during my stay I attended a ceremony where Tom became Jetsun. I made several trips to the retreat afterward, combining spiritual welfare with a small-scale business venture in England. He told me about the carousing going on in Rimpoche’s quarters, saying he was often in on it himself. “Part of the discipline here. We overcome our hang-ups.” He joked. “I just get hungover. Pot helps me contemplate but I don’t know about alcohol, all that Scotch whiskey messes things up and when he is drunk Rimpoche grabs all the girls.” I didn’t pay much attention to Jetsun’s complaints. I didn’t look for what Jetsun called “our shadows.” I liked the painted woodwork in the large temple room, the potluck dinners with everybody smoking self-rolled cigarettes afterward, the sutra chanting and the relaxed group meditation without patrolling back-whacking clerics. Whenever Rimpoche talked to me, my spine became alive with an electric current.

Rimpoche had been given a car by his support group of London-based backers and often took girl disciples on outings to the seashore. A month later, when I was in Amsterdam, an accident interfered with the temple’s routines. Rimpoche, driving home after visiting a pub in a nearby town, accompanied by his favorite mistress [Beth], hit a tree. “Alcohol-related,” Jetsun wrote. “The elegant Rover got wrecked. Beth is unscathed but Rimpoche hurt his spine and has lost the use of his lower body. The doctors see little chance for improvement but he says he’ll be just fine, that he’ll cure the spine by curative concentration and shamanic treatments. He rides about in a wheelchair; Beth takes care of him.

Janwillem van de Wetering, Afterzen, Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear, Chapter 14

[shadowplay]

Nov 5, 2020 10:07:57 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Rimpoche (2)

Rimpoche had a few students who were sent into the woods, for intensive spiritual training. They were mostly left alone there for at least a month. Jan, by accident, discovered one of those students, Tom, who had been somewhat neglected by Rimpoche. He was supposed to regularly get food and water, but somehow they forgot about him...

I had missed Rimpoche at the morning meditation in the main temple room. Maybe he was ill? Tom didn’t think so. “Partying,” Tom told me. “He does a lot of that. He has friends in the village. Girlfriends, too. Here and there.”

Later during my stay I attended a ceremony where Tom became Jetsun. I made several trips to the retreat afterward, combining spiritual welfare with a small-scale business venture in England. He told me about the carousing going on in Rimpoche’s quarters, saying he was often in on it himself. “Part of the discipline here. We overcome our hang-ups.” He joked. “I just get hungover. Pot helps me contemplate but I don’t know about alcohol, all that Scotch whiskey messes things up and when he is drunk Rimpoche grabs all the girls.” I didn’t pay much attention to Jetsun’s complaints. I didn’t look for what Jetsun called “our shadows.” I liked the painted woodwork in the large temple room, the potluck dinners with everybody smoking self-rolled cigarettes afterward, the sutra chanting and the relaxed group meditation without patrolling back-whacking clerics. Whenever Rimpoche talked to me, my spine became alive with an electric current.

Rimpoche had been given a car by his support group of London-based backers and often took girl disciples on outings to the seashore. A month later, when I was in Amsterdam, an accident interfered with the temple’s routines. Rimpoche, driving home after visiting a pub in a nearby town, accompanied by his favorite mistress [Beth], hit a tree. “Alcohol-related,” Jetsun wrote. “The elegant Rover got wrecked. Beth is unscathed but Rimpoche hurt his spine and has lost the use of his lower body. The doctors see little chance for improvement but he says he’ll be just fine, that he’ll cure the spine by curative concentration and shamanic treatments. He rides about in a wheelchair; Beth takes care of him.

Janwillem van de Wetering, Afterzen, Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear, Chapter 14

I’ve now got these books on my Christmas list - entertaining stuff. Thanks for posting.

[Reefs]

Nov 6, 2020 6:35:17 GMT -5 shadowplay said:

I’ve now got these books on my Christmas list - entertaining stuff. Thanks for posting.

Hey, you're welcome. I think the third book, Afterzen, is the best. But it's better if you read them in chronological order, for context. Because some characters show up in all three books. Enjoy!

[Reefs]

Rimpoche (3)

Rimpoche on vacation:

Rimpoche showed up in Amsterdam. He had discarded the robes of the order he had headed (saying he considered himself a nonranking civilian now). His Brooks Brothers suit made him look like a golden Miles Davis. Mistress Beth, in a miniskirt, pushed the august presence in his wheelchair. The spectacular pair caused a stir at Schiphol Airport. Rimpoche wanted to see the District that very evening. He wanted my car parked at the edge of the quarter, preferring to view the luscious scene from his wheelchair. He looked around curiously, taking sips from a bottle of tax-fee cognac, bought on the KLM plane, that fitted a metal holder attached to the wheelchair. We also drank glasses of foaming draft beer in pubs. It was spring; decorative fruit trees were in bloom in the old city. Black thrushes sang from gutters and rooftops. “You’re doing good work,” Beth said to me. “This sort of outing makes him relax. He needs that for his concentration. He is willing his legs to function again. He is actually getting better quite quickly.”

They stayed in a hotel, and my wife and I drove them around for a week. Rimpoche drank constantly and became irritable at times. My wife was about to whap a fly that was bothering her during dinner and Beth screamed “Don’t kill a sentient being!” and got whacked over the head by Rimpoche, who told her to keep her voice down.

The pleasure quarter was a magnet. Soon after Rimpoche’s visit I was walking Sensei through alleys where young, almost nude women contorted their bodies behind glass. He asked if there were also attractive young men in windows. I said there were. “Show me,” Sensei said.

Dazi-Kawa wanted nothing to do with Rimpoche’s carnal aspects. He didn’t care for Sensei, either, and refused to sit with him in our alley zendo. Dazi left to join his British superstar again. He sent me a postcard showing London Tower. The text said, “I am happy now.” I heard that he only wore his robes during ceremonies in the star’s private shrine, and wouldn’t discuss religion with anybody but his mistress. “They have a deal,” my informant said. “She takes care of his needs here, he gets her an easy passage to some really nice heaven.”

Janwillem van de Wetering, Afterzen, Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear, Chapter 14

[laughter]

Apr 29, 2020 10:56:40 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Bobbie-san

When Jan lived in Maine, he got a visit from a Zen monk. At first, Jan thought his visitor was Japanese because he dressed like one and behaved like one. As it turned out, he was actually an American who spent many years in a Zen temple in Nagasaki and somehow managed to totally blend in with the Japanese culture. Jan writes:

Bobbie-san stayed in my studio for a while. I was elated. Here was what I had longed to become long ago, a fully trained, fully enlightened, bilingual, bicultured Western Zen monk. My hero. Maitreya himself, the legendary future Buddha.
Bobbie-san had completed his koan study, had done his umpteen years in sodo and zendo training, had weathered all upheavals the tough Nagasaki zendo had devised to test his endurance, insight, egolessness, so why doubt any of this magnificent status?

It took a few days of chopping wood in my backyard, fertilizing the broccoli patch, harvesting mussels on the shore of the cove my land overlooks, discussing the finer points of Maitreya’s mission, before Bobbie-san jumped up from his cushion, one quiet evening in front of the fireplace where three sticks of “summer wood” (which is what Mainers call alder) burned spectacularly, shook me by the shoulders, looked into my eyes, and whispered fiercely, “It’s all bullnuts, you fool!”

“These days,” Bobbie said, “any self-respecting Zen teacher has to have his white disciple. Americans are particularly popular […] The Japanese contemporary point was that only Japanese masters know the meaning of nonmeaning, the sound of silence, and the location of the mustard jar that Abraham found. However, these masters were willing to share. They were passing their enlightenment to Bobbies. It was a Buddhist new-age thing, this insistence on having a white disciple. It was a fad, Bobbie claimed. He, Bobbie, had been declared to be the most perfect white disciple around, which gave his teacher a lot of face.

Bobbie, Harvard graduate, who came with an IQ in the high hundreds, had picked up Japanese so well that Nagasaki folks thought he was one of them and summoned their protective spirits when they were told he was a green-eyed demon. “You know how many kanji, Japanese characters, I know” Bobbie-san asked me. “No? All of them. You know how many sutras, Buddhist scripture, I can chant in formalized classic Chinese? All of them, too. You know how much lay folks pay to have me perform the rites at their home altars? Up to a thousand dollars.”

He made me think of the man at the top of the pole, another koan that Sensei had me break my brain on. Top of the pole, but I hadn’t got there yet. Bobbie-san evidently had. His teacher kept telling him “You’re there, you’ve done it, but you’re too young. You have to be my private attendant, hang out with me, learn the practice now that you have the theory—soon I’ll launch you on your career.” Top of the pole? Some famous commentary says, “Take the next step.” That’s what I finally came up with too.

Janwillem van de Wetering, Afterzen, Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear, Chapter 4

In a way, what Bobbie had concluded was a fad, is just the Universe doin' it's thing. Which doesn't mean that he's wrong! It's just that the resulting cross-cultural influence was rather profound. As per Low, after all, how can an iron cow give birth to a calf? What an absurdity!

[Reefs]

Feb 17, 2021 13:27:30 GMT -5 laughter said:

Apr 29, 2020 10:56:40 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Bobbie-san

When Jan lived in Maine, he got a visit from a Zen monk. At first, Jan thought his visitor was Japanese because he dressed like one and behaved like one. As it turned out, he was actually an American who spent many years in a Zen temple in Nagasaki and somehow managed to totally blend in with the Japanese culture. Jan writes:

In a way, what Bobbie had concluded was a fad, is just the Universe doin' it's thing. Which doesn't mean that he's wrong! It's just that the resulting cross-cultural influence was rather profound. As per Low, after all, how can an iron cow give birth to a calf? What an absurdity!

Bobbie-san's abstract intelligence was obviously off the charts, but he had zero practical intelligence. Jan created a lot of situations where he tested Bobbie-san's ingenuity, and he literally failed at every opportunity. On a maturity level he seemed to have been stuck at around the early teen age. He couldn't even order a meal in a restaurant and look the waitress straight in the eye without blushing. So IMO, the Bobbie-san story makes a lot more sense from the psychological perspective than from a Zen perspective. You see, he was a scholar, i.e. he lived in a very quiet and protected environment. In that sense, there are similarities to a life in a monastery or Zen temple. But once he got out into the streets and into the market place, where his 'accomplishments' are put to a reality test, he failed (together with the other Zen 'masters' who had recognized him). Now, this isn't just a Zen culture thing. They have their Bobbie-san's and phony masters in the West as well. And notice the irony here. Bodhidharma came to China to prevent exactly that from happening, and yet it happened again, people pay more attention to the letters in the holy book than the living truth in themselves and around them. But that's just the way things go once a movement becomes an organization. Some things never change.

[laughter]

Feb 19, 2021 8:37:27 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Feb 17, 2021 13:27:30 GMT -5 laughter said:

In a way, what Bobbie had concluded was a fad, is just the Universe doin' it's thing. Which doesn't mean that he's wrong! It's just that the resulting cross-cultural influence was rather profound. As per Low, after all, how can an iron cow give birth to a calf? What an absurdity!

Bobbie-san's abstract intelligence was obviously off the charts, but he had zero practical intelligence. Jan created a lot of situations where he tested Bobbie-san's ingenuity, and he literally failed at every opportunity. On a maturity level he seemed to have been stuck at around the early teen age. He couldn't even order a meal in a restaurant and look the waitress straight in the eye without blushing. So IMO, the Bobbie-san story makes a lot more sense from the psychological perspective than from a Zen perspective. You see, he was a scholar, i.e. he lived in a very quiet and protected environment. In that sense, there are similarities to a life in a monastery or Zen temple. But once he got out into the streets and into the market place, where his 'accomplishments' are put to a reality test, he failed (together with the other Zen 'masters' who had recognized him). Now, this isn't just a Zen culture thing. They have their Bobbie-san's and phony masters in the West as well. And notice the irony here. Bodhidharma came to China to prevent exactly that from happening, and yet it happened again, people pay more attention to the letters in the holy book than the living truth in themselves and around them. But that's just the way things go once a movement becomes an organization. Some things never change.

At the risk of analyzing poetry, it seems to me that this explains why there's so much irony in the koan commentaries. Zen itself presents a paradox: a culture that keeps strict track of it's Master-lineage (The Iron Cow), which has as it's goal to get people in touch with a state of body/mind transcendent of any and all culture (the calf at the top of the 100 foot pole).

[inavalan]

Feb 19, 2021 8:37:27 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Feb 17, 2021 13:27:30 GMT -5 laughter said:

In a way, what Bobbie had concluded was a fad, is just the Universe doin' it's thing. Which doesn't mean that he's wrong! It's just that the resulting cross-cultural influence was rather profound. As per Low, after all, how can an iron cow give birth to a calf? What an absurdity!

Bobbie-san's abstract intelligence was obviously off the charts, but he had zero practical intelligence. Jan created a lot of situations where he tested Bobbie-san's ingenuity, and he literally failed at every opportunity. On a maturity level he seemed to have been stuck at around the early teen age. He couldn't even order a meal in a restaurant and look the waitress straight in the eye without blushing. So IMO, the Bobbie-san story makes a lot more sense from the psychological perspective than from a Zen perspective. You see, he was a scholar, i.e. he lived in a very quiet and protected environment. In that sense, there are similarities to a life in a monastery or Zen temple. But once he got out into the streets and into the market place, where his 'accomplishments' are put to a reality test, he failed (together with the other Zen 'masters' who had recognized him). Now, this isn't just a Zen culture thing. They have their Bobbie-san's and phony masters in the West as well. And notice the irony here. Bodhidharma came to China to prevent exactly that from happening, and yet it happened again, people pay more attention to the letters in the holy book than the living truth in themselves and around them. But that's just the way things go once a movement becomes an organization. Some things never change.

This

"once he got out into the streets and into the market place, where his 'accomplishments' are put to a reality test, he failed"

raises an interesting question: should an accomplished Zen master be ready to deal with any environment unfamiliar to him, as well as those who regularly deal with that environment? I don't know what a Zen Master is supposed to know, what he prepares for.

This question expands further into: should spiritual practice prepare one for the life here in the physical, or for the beyond in the non-physical?

Are we here to make the best of here, or to prepare for our return to where we came from?

Why are we here?

Jan's testing of Bobbie-san's ingenuity comes from his expectations of what a Zen Master should be capable of.