Janwillem van de Wetering - Japanese Zen

[Reefs]

Feb 19, 2021 15:35:42 GMT -5 inavalan said:

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

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.

The focus in Zen is on the here and now. So practice in the sense of preparing someone for something, be it here or in the hereafter, that's having it backwards. The 'goal' is to be as you are, as you really are. So you have to step out of time, not project yourself further into time. That's the difference between liberation and samsara.

But my point was about contrast. In an isolated and controlled environment such as a campus or a monastery, it's a lot easier to find peace of mind because there's less contrast, less things to react to. Out in the street and the marketplace, anything can happen anytime. So one who can keep stil his peace of mind in the midst of bedlam, that one really got it, because then it is unconditional. The one who loses his peace of mind as soon as he steps out of his familiar/controlled environment, that one hasn't really got it, because it is conditional. So what to look for in terms of how a Zen Master is supposed to act and react in the world, there obviously can't be any general rules or standards of behavior, except maybe for one thing: spontaneity!

You are right though, testing other fellow students or fellow masters depth of understanding at every opportunity seems to be a typical Zen thing. I'll give you Jan's reasoning in his own words, when Bobbie-san and Jan met again several years later, as to why he did what he did when they met for the first time:

[...] I had “checked him out” in various ways, thinking I shouldn’t miss the chance to figure out a saint, sage, or whatever term applies to a human in the selfless state. Sensei had done extensive Zen training too, but as a layman, and had never received a seal of final approval. Bobbie-san had successfully completed first monkish, then priestly, sodo and zendo training. To me, in those earlier days, that would equate with having learned all, ergo, there you are. No more koans. So then what happens? (I knew better by now—nothing much happens, except some people go crazy, like a lady disciple of Sensei’s who, released after solving all koans in Sensei’s book, found freedom too much to cope with and needed serious treatment for the rest of her life.) During that first meeting I was sure I couldn’t compare my spiritual insights with Bobbie’s, but I had thought of another way to analyze his status. I had always been led to believe that “realized” Zen men are superbly practical. The egoless being cannot be beaten. No matter what comes up, they spread their spiritual arms and sail gracefully across the hurdle.
Zen-Rambo.
I called Bobbie-san that now and he laughed, “I boasted, didn’t I? Zen-Rambos don’t do that. You found me lacking.”
The lacking was mutual. What kind of a host uses a guest for a spiritual guinea pig, but that’s what happened. During that first encounter I used my own habitat to test the allegedly enlightened visitor...

Janwillem van de Wetering, The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery, Chapter 15

[inavalan]

Feb 21, 2021 10:43:19 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Feb 19, 2021 15:35:42 GMT -5 inavalan said:

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.

The focus in Zen is on the here and now. So practice in the sense of preparing someone for something, be it here or in the hereafter, that's having it backwards. The 'goal' is to be as you are, as you really are. So you have to step out of time, not project yourself further into time. That's the difference between liberation and samsara.

But my point was about contrast. In an isolated and controlled environment such as a campus or a monastery, it's a lot easier to find peace of mind because there's less contrast, less things to react to. Out in the street and the marketplace, anything can happen anytime. So one who can keep stil his peace of mind in the midst of bedlam, that one really got it, because then it is unconditional. The one who loses his peace of mind as soon as he steps out of his familiar/controlled environment, that one hasn't really got it, because it is conditional. So what to look for in terms of how a Zen Master is supposed to act and react in the world, there obviously can't be any general rules or standards of behavior, except maybe for one thing: spontaneity!

You are right though, testing other fellow students or fellow masters depth of understanding at every opportunity seems to be a typical Zen thing. I'll give you Jan's reasoning in his own words, when Bobbie-san and Jan met again several years later, as to why he did what he did when they met for the first time:

[...] I had “checked him out” in various ways, thinking I shouldn’t miss the chance to figure out a saint, sage, or whatever term applies to a human in the selfless state. Sensei had done extensive Zen training too, but as a layman, and had never received a seal of final approval. Bobbie-san had successfully completed first monkish, then priestly, sodo and zendo training. To me, in those earlier days, that would equate with having learned all, ergo, there you are. No more koans. So then what happens? (I knew better by now—nothing much happens, except some people go crazy, like a lady disciple of Sensei’s who, released after solving all koans in Sensei’s book, found freedom too much to cope with and needed serious treatment for the rest of her life.) During that first meeting I was sure I couldn’t compare my spiritual insights with Bobbie’s, but I had thought of another way to analyze his status. I had always been led to believe that “realized” Zen men are superbly practical. The egoless being cannot be beaten. No matter what comes up, they spread their spiritual arms and sail gracefully across the hurdle.
Zen-Rambo.
I called Bobbie-san that now and he laughed, “I boasted, didn’t I? Zen-Rambos don’t do that. You found me lacking.”
The lacking was mutual. What kind of a host uses a guest for a spiritual guinea pig, but that’s what happened. During that first encounter I used my own habitat to test the allegedly enlightened visitor...

Janwillem van de Wetering, The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery, Chapter 15

Nice.

We all learn, and those who believe they see (or they've seen) the "peak" (in terms of accomplishment, knowledge, realization, ...), once there they see there's more (always). So, maybe, the "higher" learning is that's no end to learning.

Intuitively, it seems to be about honestly seeking, living, being, in every situation, in every moment.

[Reefs]

Rimpoche (the end)

Half a year later, Tom/Jetsun, now a monk but dressed in designer jeans, a dress shirt, and a linen jacket, showed up to have his turn being guided through Amsterdam’s maze of twisting alleys. As we walked and stared, Jetsun kept offering me cookies he said he had baked at the Scottish temple. I began to feel giddy quickly. I had smoked hashish in Africa (and had not particularly liked the experience, preferring dry Cape wine, both heady and legal) but didn’t know the drug could be eaten. My legs had become elastic and weren’t too willing to make it to the nearby zendo. We floated above our meditation cushions while Jetsun’s fourth-dimensional voice told me about his recent trip to India, as Rimpoche’s assistant. They had meditated in Himalayan caves close to the Tibetan border and everything went well there: Jetsun experienced insights, shape shifts, realizations, liberations, journeys into the realms of supreme understanding, but later, staying at houses of supportive Buddhists in Calcutta, Rimpoche was drinking heavily again and caused problems by bothering female members of the households. After being evicted, once again, by an angry father and husband, Jetsun confronted his out-of-control mentor. Rimpoche got upset. “He told me to get away from him,” Jetsun’s booming voice (my drugged ears acted up strangely) told me. “He tore up my plane ticket. I was begging in the streets for a third-class passage on a rustbucket cargo.” Jetsun made slow movements with arms that looked impossibly long to me. “A white beggar in Buddhist robes in India’s poorest city? And Rimpoche still seducing wives, daughters, servant girls, nuns, the cat?” Jetsun’s thundering laughter shook the zendo. “He is impossibly attractive!”

Rimpoche’s eighteenth high-lama body (he had been recognized seventeen times before), weakened by hard living, died when it was barely in its forties. I mentioned the fact to a Mohawk shaman who was lecturing in New England and was staying at our house. Her eyes widened as she took in the pictures I was drawing for her. Abandonment of faithful disciples. Fornication. Mismanagement of funds. Drunken levity. Lethal addictions. A radiant irresistible presence, whose teachings now illuminate the globe. A flawed personality? Riddled with bad habits? Is a saint subject to rules?

I knew she had studied in Mongolia, with both shamans and Buddhist lamas. Rimpoche, a native of eastern Tibet, came from both a Buddhist and a shamanic tradition. There was a silence. The shaman composed herself. Her large black eyes sparkled. “Yes,” she said, “I’ve heard of that happening before. It probably was the only way Rimpoche could have stayed here.”

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