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A peaceable heart

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , on 19 November 2025| Leave a Comment »

Like the word silly, which once meant “innocent” (“the silly sheep”) but now means “foolish, frivolous, lacking in common sense,” the word contention has a distinctive history. Derived from the Latin contentio, it once meant “striving, struggle, competition.” But sometime in the sixteenth century, contention came to mean “disagreement, argument, fighting.” Unlike silly, contention has retained its earlier meaning, but today it most often conjures scenes of conflict, dysfunction, and disharmony—or, at its most extreme, mortal combat. A contentious person is someone inclined to instigate division, discord, and outright feuding—and, in the worst case, incite violent action.

In its healthiest manifestation, contention is fair-minded competition, physical or intellectual. The Bills and the Chiefs contend for victory on the playing field. Olympians contend for the gold. Nations contend in an open, if regulated, market. But in its unhealthiest forms, contention is first and last a ruthless power struggle. Fairness goes by the board, as do such norms as lawfulness, decency, and respect. Oxford debaters contend, but unless they are prepared to be disqualified, they adhere to established rules. But contending parties in an ungoverned dispute may simply fight to the bitter end, verbally or physically, with no holds barred. All that matters is winning or being in the right, or both.

Contention is often understood to be an existing condition, akin to the temperature of a room or the quality of the air. Likewise, a propensity toward contention is commonly viewed as an aspect of temperament, a trait of personality more likely to harshen than mellow with age. But from the standpoint of Zen practice, contentiousness is a mental and emotional capacity susceptible to changing conditions. With sufficient self-awareness, we can choose at any time to nourish or actively neglect it. At the same time, we can also cultivate a peaceable heart: a heart inclined toward peace.

Toward that end, classic Zen teachings offer a practice known as the Four Great Efforts, an aspect of the Noble Eightfold Path. Practitioners are encouraged to “water the seeds” of such “wholesome” states of mind as mindfulness, patience, kindness, and wisdom, as distinguished from such “unwholesome” states as greed, hatred, and vindictiveness. The first “effort” is to cultivate wholesome states that have already arisen. The second is to nourish wholesome states that have yet to arise. The third is to allow unwholesome states that have already arisen to languish. And the fourth is to do the same with unwholesome states that have yet to arise. These efforts are to be conducted methodically, their aim being the perfection of character. In monastic settings, the practice of the Four Great Efforts may include the recitation of vows and the contemplation of such virtues as patience, kindness, and compassion. For lay practitioners, it may be enough to regularly stop whatever one is doing and check one’s heart for currents of aversion. Bringing contemplative attention to such currents can lessen their destructive power and forestall future harm.

Robert Thurman, an emeritus professor of Indo-European Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, once noted that throughout our everyday lives we are feeding one state of mind or another. We may be doing so habitually and unconsciously, with neither a beneficent nor malevolent intent. But whether we are listening to a quiet, contemplative piece of music or watching a violent, blood-drenched action film, we are directing our attention to a particular object. We are engaging, as it were, in a form of meditation. In the first instance, the mental state being fueled is one of tranquility, harmony, and accord. In the second, it is one of destructive, ego-driven action. But whatever our present state of mind may be, for good or ill we are at once sustaining and strengthening it.

In an old Jewish story, a man is strolling along a sandy beach when a bottle floats by. Out pops a genie, who invites the man to make a wish. Without hesitation, he blurts out, “world peace.” “Oh, I’m sorry,” replies the genie. “A lot of people ask for that, but I’m afraid it’s out of the question. Please make another wish.”

Not everyone would agree with that genie. In the views of such prominent peace advocates as Desmond Tutu, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Merton, and the Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh, peace between peoples and nations is an attainable, if distant, objective. But, as Thich Nhat Hanh often reminded ardent pacifists back in the 1970s, any serious effort toward peace must begin with ourselves. At any moment, we can examine the presence of contentiousness in our hearts and minds, and, if we so choose, deprive it of favorable conditions. We can practice what the Dalai Lama has called “inner disarmament,” even as we tend a peaceable heart.

Image: Fred Easker, Mississippi Meditation

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The practice of veneration

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , , on 22 October 2025| Leave a Comment »

In the closing line of his poem “Sandstone Keepsake,” the Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney describes himself as “one of the venerators.” That line is striking, not only because the verb venerate has largely disappeared from everyday discourse but also because the spirit of veneration itself, like water in certain parts of the world, is becoming as scarce as it is precious.

Veneration derives from the Latin root veneratio¸which means “reverence or profound respect.” In his poem, which was written during the Troubles, Heaney depicts himself wading on a beach on the Inishowen Peninsula, at the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. There he finds a “chalky, russet” chunk of sandstone, which he subsequently likens to the “long venerated” heart of a 13th-century martyr. And he portrays himself as a humble countryman, out for an evening walk and no threat to the wary British authorities of Northern Ireland, who may well be watching him with binoculars.

Humility is an essential component of veneration. It can be expressed physically through the acts of bowing, kneeling, or prostration. No less important than these outer forms, however, is a mental attitude of selfless regard. In Zen parlance, this attitude is sometimes described as “lowering the mast of the self.” Often it is accompanied by silence, stillness, and a profound sense of gratitude.

In formal religion, the objects of veneration have most often been spiritual leaders, saints, martyrs, texts, statues, and sites regarded as sacred. A short list might include the Cross, the Shroud of Turin, the Torah, the Koran, Bodh Gaya, Mecca, and Bethlehem. Informally, however, those unaffiliated with organized religion can elect to venerate an art such as painting, sculpture, or poetry; an institution, such as higher education, medicine, or law; a trade, vocation, or profession; the wild natural world; blood or spiritual ancestors; or, not least, the person or persons standing before them. In traditional Asian cultures, an attitude of veneration may be expressed by pressing the palms of one’s two hands together and making a nod or bow. More subtly, it can be expressed by offering a friend a gift with both hands.

In the Zen monastic tradition, a sense of veneration extends to the familiar objects of everyday life, such as one’s cushion, eating bowls, garments, and utensils. Beyond that, it also encompasses such tasks as cooking, cleaning, gardening, and temple maintenance. And in Japanese Zen, it is closely associated with two specific practices.

The first of those practices is known as ma, which roughly translates as “giving [an object] appropriate space.” Whether the activity be the tea ceremony, flower arranging, calligraphy, or one of the martial arts, this principle enjoins the practitioner to honor both the objects of attention and the space around them. In his notebooks the writer and Zen practitioner Peter Matthiessen spoke of the “fierce cleanliness” of Dai Bosatsu Zendo, the monastery where he learned the practice of Zen. Having trained there myself, and having washed its windows, vacuumed its tatami mats, and washed its floors by assuming a deep crouch and running down its Tasmanian oak floors with a wet cloth, I can attest to the cleanliness of its interiors. But equally important were the austerity and minimalism of its décor. The objects to be dusted and meticulously arranged were few and far between, and the spaces between them felt as present as the objects themselves. Both their presence and the space between them embodied the “Way” of ma.

As the conscientious, if temporary, steward of those objects, I learned to embody the second principle of veneration, known in Zen as menmitsu-no-kafu. Derived from roots meaning “interwoven” and “family,” menmitsu refers to a warm, wholehearted, and intimate quality of attention to the objects in one’s care. However humble or precious, those objects are to be treated with what is sometimes called “grandmother mind,” as though they were members of one’s family. Whether the items in question be the three bowls used in oryoki (formal Zen meals), the towels folded and placed on the beds of incoming guests, the exact, woodpecker-like striking of the han (wooden block) to initiate a sitting, or the placement of one’s hands when engaged in zazen (seated meditation), the Way of menmitsu may be understood as a form of kinetic, daily veneration.

John Daido Loori Roshi, an American Zen master, once noted that it was impossible to bow in gratitude and complain at the same time. Analogously, it is difficult, if not impossible, to nurture the spirit of veneration while in pursuit of riches, importance, power, and conquest. The two sets of values are incompatible. But even at a time when our cultural ethos has sharply veered toward the latter way of being, it is still possible to become, like Seamus Heaney, one of the venerators. At any given moment, it is still possible to choose.

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To read the full text of “Sandstone Keepsake,” see https://voetica.com/poem/7555.

Photo: Dai Bosatsu Zendo

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The inside story

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , , on 27 May 2025| 1 Comment »

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An unexpected lightness

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 19 March 2025| 4 Comments »

In the summer of the year 2000, I had the good fortune to be spending the month of June in Ireland, where I was teaching Irish literature to American students at Trinity College, Dublin. One sunny afternoon, as I was walking down Nassau Street in central Dublin, I stopped to browse at a sidewalk bookstall.

Enclosed in wooden trays were dozens of used books, including hefty, well-worn volumes on Irish history, culture, literature, and topography; slim, tattered collections by obscure Irish poets; dated anthologies of Irish drama, short stories, and essays; and biographies of such luminaries as Michael Davitt, Michael Collins, and Éamon de Valera. Finding many books of interest but none I cared to buy, I was about to leave, when another book caught my eye. Lo and behold, it was a book of my own: my verse novella, Midcentury, which my Irish publisher, Salmon Poetry, had released three years earlier.

Midcentury is a book-length, blank-verse meditation, narrated by a middle-aged American lexicographer living alone in Ireland in the nineteen-forties. Down on his luck and overly fond of Irish whiskey, he is seeking solace in the Irish landscape and Ireland’s wartime neutrality. His dominant themes, interwoven through six, interrelated sections in the manner of a string quartet, include impermanence, dispossession, forgiveness, the roots of language, Ireland’s tragic history, and his own spiritual deracination and renewal.

I began the  the first section, “The Word from Dublin, 1944,” while in residence at Yaddo, the writers’ retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York. The remaining sections were written in multiple venues over the next three years. I completed the book in 1995 while staying at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Annaghmakerrig), the Irish writers’ retreat in Co. Monaghan. Before I had even begun this project, I might add, months of historical research into mid-twentieth-century Irish history and culture had laid its foundation. And there it was, my magnum opus, for sale on a Dublin sidewalk for less than a pint of Guinness.

“All conditioned things,” the Buddha is reported to have said, “are of the nature of vanishing.” Where books are concerned, those conditions include the vagaries of publishing, marketing, aesthetic fashion, critical opinion, and time itself, which can be cruel to unprotected ink and paper. With obvious exceptions, most authors should not be surprised to see their books vanish or be forgotten in due time—and often sooner rather than later. (With Midcentury I’ve had better luck: according to WorldCat, the worldwide library database, the book is currently in 89 libraries, here and abroad). No matter how many hours went into the making of a book, it can disappear quickly and with scarcely a trace, taking with it whatever ephemeral acclaim it might have accrued. In his poem “Provide, Provide!” Robert Frost puts the matter succinctly: “No memory of having starred / Atones for later disregard.”

What I am speaking of, of course, is the reality of impermanence, which the Zen teacher Norman Fischer has called the “cornerstone of Buddhist teachings and practice.” For Frost, the remedy was to “make the whole stock exchange your own,” which might increase the chances of having interested parties at one’s bedside as the end draws near. “Better to go down dignified,” he advised, “With boughten friendship at your side / Than none at all.” From the perspective of Zen teachings, however, the issue is neither so materialistically defined nor so easily resolved. Nor is impermanence something we can deal with later. It is immanent, if not always apparent, in things as they appear to us in the here and now. And, as Fischer puts it, “to understand impermanence at the deepest level, and to merge with it fully, is the whole of the Buddhist path.” Mindfulness, the central practice of Zen meditation, is “not a way to cope with or overcome impermanence. It is the way to fully appreciate and live it.”

That is more easily said than done. A lifetime of Western conditioning militates against it. But having practiced Zen for more than three decades, I can report that eventually one can get the hang of living within, rather than outside, the reality of impermanence. And should that happen, you may find yourself experiencing an unexpected lightness of being. As the Vietnamese master Thich Nhat Hanh often noted, we suffer not because things are impermanent but because we expect them to be permanent when they are not. Truly releasing that expectation can lift a self-inflicted burden, offer a fresh way of seeing, and open a gate to the next new experience. And for Zen practitioners who are also creative artists, living in alignment with impermanence rather than habitually resisting it can both facilitate the process of artistic creation and make it far more enjoyable. “Long live impermanence!” Thich Nhat Hanh, a poet and the author of more than a hundred books, delighted in saying, with only the gentlest irony in his tone.

Norman Fischer, When You Greet Me I Bow (Shambhala, 2022), 99, 102.

Photo: “At the Bookstall,” by garryknight (Creative Commons)

 

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Everyday ceremonials

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , on 18 December 2024| 2 Comments »

cleanliness-in-zen-buddhism-1

Around the time I began writing these essays, now more than sixteen years ago, I also wrote a poem by the same title:

ONE TIME, ONE MEETING

Picking up the phone to call my son,
I entertain the thought that every act,
No matter how familiar or banal,
Might be construed as unrepeatable
And all of life as ceremonial.
What could be less formal than the feel
Of yet another handset in the hand
Or, beneath my fingertips, the cool
Resistance to the punching-in of numbers?
And what could be more normal than hello,
Spoken by a voice I couldn’t fail
To recognize, despite the poor connection,
The fading in and out across the miles?
And yet to entertain that counter-thought,
To see each action and its consequence
As marvelous and not to be repeated,
Suffices to enlarge this conversation
Beyond the casual or circumstantial,
The morning’s headlines and the evening’s news,
As though just now the truth of things had spoken.

                        (From Leaf, Sunlight, Asphalt, Salmon Poetry, 2009)

As longtime readers of this column may recall, “one time, one meeting” is a translation of the Japanese phrase ichigo ichie. Historically associated with the tea ceremony, the phrase is also a motto for Zen practitioners. It reminds us that in truth, if not always in appearance, every moment of our lives is unprecedented and unrepeatable. As such, it is worthy of our full attention, however habitual or mundane it may seem.

That is the central theme of the poem. But rereading it after many years, the line I find most arresting is “And all of life as ceremonial.” That line envisions a hypothetical (and highly unlikely) state of affairs and should not be read too literally. But the notion of “all of life” being ceremonial invites deeper consideration.

“We don’t stand on ceremony,” I recall a new acquaintance saying, as my first wife and I arrived at her home for a Christmas party. Our hostess’s intention, I assume, was to put us at ease. At the same time, the tone of her greeting was declarative and almost boastful.  It reflected and even championed the casual, informal, and individualistic ethos of American culture. And if that was the character of our society four decades ago, it is even more so now.

Ceremonies have their place and their purpose. Weddings, funerals, graduation exercises, church services, and the like mark certain occasions as special and sometimes historic. Whether religious or secular, they bear an aura of the sacramental. At the same time, those of a skeptical nature sometimes view such ceremonials as hollow, archaic forms and little more. As seen from that perspective, public ceremonies function largely to preserve a tradition, elevate the institutions that sponsor them, and preserve existing hierarchies of status, money, and power. Ceremonies are the province of cultural and economic elites. And though they may console, honor, inspire, and otherwise benefit the ordinary people who attend and value them, they may have little to do with the conduct of their daily lives.

Not so in Zen practice. In Zen monasteries, temples, and practice centers around the world, the most familiar chores and tasks, whether they be washing windows, vacuuming cushions, or sweeping steps, are carried out in silence and in ways both ritualistic and ceremonial. And for committed lay practitioners, the attitude underlying this practice extends well beyond the precincts of the zendo and into the activities of everyday life.

In The Little Book of Zen Healing, Paula Arai, a longtime Zen practitioner, observes that “by consciously approaching an action with presence and purpose, you can ritualize any act to be a healing activity.” That may sound like a daunting challenge, best left to advanced practitioners, but it is quite the opposite. As simple as it is efficacious, anyone can learn to do it.

If you would like to experience the practice for yourself, choose a familiar task, perhaps one you perform every day. Take three deep but natural breaths, following them from start to finish.

Now reflect on the nature of the task at hand. Consider its relationship to present conditions, including the environment, the season, and the time of day. If the task involves a tangible object, such as the cotton T-shirt you are folding or the hand-crafted ornament you are hanging on the tree, take a minute to contemplate its constituent materials and the labor that went into its making. Then give the task your full attention, as though you had nothing else to do and nowhere else to go.

Undertaken with this attitude, onerous chores can become dignified acts of attention. Personal and household maintenance, which can occupy so large a space in our daily lives, can be transformed into a venue for insight and understanding. And over time, if you persist, this venerable practice can foster greater appreciation of the gifts of nature, closer alignment with things as they are, and a profound and lasting equanimity.

_____

Paula Arai, The Little Book of Zen Healing, (Shambhala 2023), 107

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Enough is enough

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , on 25 September 2024| 1 Comment »

thoreau-house

One evening a few months ago, my wife and I went out to dinner with a couple of friends. I ordered Shepherd’s Pie, one of my favorite comfort foods. “There you go,” our server chirped, as she handed me an oversized plate, heaped high with ground beef, onions, mashed potatoes, carrots, and peas. The volume of this miniature Everest (which reminded my wife of the mashed-potato scene in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind) far exceeded what I would have served myself at home. Yet over the next half hour or so, absorbed in conversation, I consumed every bit of it, accompanied appropriately by a pint of Guinness. And when, a few hours later, I didn’t feel so good, I had little doubt as to the cause of my distress. For reasons both understandable and regrettable, I had ignored my intuitive sense of how much was enough.

In the Zen tradition, the ability to recognize appropriate limits and live within them is known as chisoku (Ch. zhizu), which literally means “know enough.” In his book Storehouse of Treasures: Recovering the Riches of Chan and Zen (Shambhala, 2024), the Zen teacher Nelson Foster examines this principle in detail, tracing its origins in ancient Chinese texts. As Foster explains, chisoku “doesn’t refer to having adequate knowledge but rather to knowing how much—how little—is enough.” And like loving-kindness, compassion, empathy, and other wholesome qualities of heart and mind, chisoku can be actively developed through meditative practice. In Foster’s words, we can consciously “cultivate an acceptance of life within limits,” should we choose to do so.

Unfortunately, as Foster duly acknowledges, the venerable practice of chisoku runs sharply against the grain of modern, consumer-oriented societies, where we are aggressively encouraged to want more than enough: more living space, more comfort, more convenience, more efficiency, more power, wealth, and social status. To be sure, there is a countervailing strain in Western culture: a desire for simplicity, for modest but sufficient living conditions, and for a way of life marked not by conspicuous affluence but by humility and environmental awareness. In American culture, the locus classicus of this collective longing is Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854), its ruling icon Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond. Contemporary manifestations can be observed in the “tiny-house” and “simple-living” movements, in off-the-grid, self-sufficient housing, and in community-based and eco-friendly markets and gardens. But those laudable endeavors must contend with powerful commercial interests in general and advertising in particular, which relentlessly urge us to want more than we need and to consume at a rate and to a degree that is both unnecessary and unsustainable. Whether the product being marketed is a time-saving kitchen device, a softer disposable diaper, the latest smart phone, or central, “energy-efficient” air-conditioning, we are implored at every turn to exceed our actual needs.

The ancient Chan texts teach otherwise. As the most famous of those texts, the Tao Te Ching, puts it, “No offense exceeds that of greediness, / no disaster exceeds that of not knowing enough / and no fault brings on grief like covetousness.” Conversely, the conscious cultivation of “knowing enough” can relieve fear and anxiety, and over time its effects can be transformative. Beyond “food, shelter, clothing, and medicine,” which classical Buddhism views as foundational to human well-being, the practice of chisoku offers a path to lasting satisfaction and a sense of profound contentment. “Just secure a heartmind of ease,” asserts one of the “capping phrases” used in Zen training, “and everywhere brings delight / you don’t weigh the morning market against the cloudy mountain.” Or, as the Japanese poet and Zen priest Daigu Ryokan, who lived alone in a thatched-roof, mountainside hut for thirteen years, declared, “Desire nothing, and you’re content with everything.”

The practice of chisoku is integral to Zen teachings, and it is strictly enforced in Zen monastic training, where monks and nuns are admonished to take only as much rice as they need and to eat every grain they have taken. But the underlying principle of recognizing limits and being gratefully content with what one already has is hardly unique to Zen. Similar teachings and practices can be found in other spiritual traditions, including the Confucian, the Islamic, the Hindu, and the Judeo-Christian. Likewise, the wisdom literature of secular, literary culture abounds in Western versions of chisoku. Foster quotes with relish an English proverb that first appeared in print in Thomas Malory’s poem Morte d’Arthur (c. 1450): “Enough is as good as a feast.”

Reflecting on that proverb, I’m reminded of a remark by a former colleague who had recently retired, a fellow professor who had loved his job and had for decades performed it with distinction. Asked by a reporter how he felt, he replied, “Enough is enough”—and expressed no regrets whatsoever.

Nelson Foster, Storehouse of Treasures: Recovering the Riches of Chan and Zen (Shambhala, 2024), 152, 156, 168.

Photo: A replica of Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond, Walden Pond State Reservation.

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