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Posts Tagged ‘zen’

I should have thought

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , , , , on 3 December 2025| Leave a Comment »

Many years ago, when I was still an undergraduate, I traveled from eastern Iowa to the North of England to study English literature at the University of Leeds, a so-called “redbrick” university in West Yorkshire. There I lived for a year in a village on the outskirts of that soot-laden city in a hall of residence built in 1865 from Yorkshire gritstone. Most of my fellow residents were English, but others hailed from such faraway countries as Ghana, South Africa, Iceland, and Rhodesia.

Sometimes in the evenings I would walk down the hall to have a chat with my friend Asmundur (“Asi”) Jonsson, a husky, deep-voiced, older student from Keflavik. Asi smoked an ornate Meerschaum pipe. Sometimes, after I’d offered up a fresh opinion—or, no less likely, a callow misperception—he would sit back in his chair and patiently puff on his pipe as he formulated his response. “I should have thought,” he would finally say, and proceed to address whatever I’d said. More than once, his views differed from mine. I have long since forgotten our opinions, but I recall his opening phrase as vividly as I do the sweet fragrance of his tobacco. I had never heard it before and have rarely heard it since.

“I should have thought” is a verbal phrase cast in what grammarians call the conditional past tense. It places the action, in this case having a thought, in a time prior to the present, before a subsequent event has occurred. In this instance, the subsequent event is the voicing of a different or contrary opinion. For example, were Geoffrey to observe that “I’ve heard that it’s better to brush your teeth first, then floss afterward,” Nigel might reply, “I should have thought it was the other way around.” As this innocuous exchange illustrates, “I should have thought” provides a vehicle for polite disagreement. But even when engaged in more charged conversations, especially those concerning politics and religion, this now rare usage can serve to open the conversational space, establish an appropriate distance between conversationalists, and set a distinctive tone.

In contemporary American life, we have grown accustomed to living in cramped conversational spaces, where there is often little room for a variety of perspectives or a divergence of views. If one participant says something the other finds erroneous, ill-informed, or otherwise objectionable, the conversation may soon be abruptly over. Or worse, it might escalate into an angry confrontation.

By contrast, “I should have thought” expands the conversational arena to accommodate multiple, differing, and opposing views. And it opens the possibility of a “both/and” rather than a “right/wrong” or “either/or” resolution. Even views that stood in polar opposition at the beginning of the conversation may, by its end, prove compatible and even complementary.

By the same token, “I should have thought” widens the emotional distance between the participants in a conversation. It establishes an appropriate space between them. As the Zen teacher Norman Fischer has observed, in any relationship between two people, two components are ever present: their connection and their essential solitude. The two participants may be intimately connected by such bonds as family, friendship, country, or affiliation. At the same time, each has a private inner life that the other has no way of knowing. In the Japanese martial arts, an appropriate combative distance (known as ma-ai) is strictly maintained. Analogously, an appropriate distance in conversation honors both the speakers’ interconnection and their respective solitudes. And, as Fischer puts it, it also creates “[a] space charged with openness, silence, and mystery.”

And that is not all. In its very formality, “I should have thought” forges a link between contemporary usage, which tends to be casual and all too often careless, and the long history of the English language. Asi’s first language was Icelandic. He learned English in a school, where the old rule regarding “should” rather than “would” was still taught and enforced. According to that rule, “should” must be used when speaking in the first person. However archaic, Asi’s locution conjured a linguistic universe in which the observance of such fine distinctions imparted precision to ordinary speech. By extension, it also heightened the beauty and dignity of a conversation.

Today, no one I know would say “I should have thought,” except perhaps ironically or in a role-playing context. The phrase would come across as a pretentious affectation. But might there not be other ways by which the space, distance, and tone once created by that turn of phrase could be re-imagined, if only as a welcome alternative to the rude interruptions and abrupt dismissals, the in-your-face confrontations, and the unnecessary misunderstandings that afflict contemporary American discourse? I should have thought so.

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Decent ordinary life

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , on 8 July 2025| Leave a Comment »

If you follow the national and international news, you may be forgiven for concluding that current political, economic, and military developments are the most important things in this turning world. Next to them, the ordinary activities of daily life may seem slight, undramatic, and banal. But two paintings, both of them focused on everyday life, suggest otherwise.

Johannes Vermeer’s A View of Delft (c. 1660-1663) is by common consensus a great work of art. When Marcel Proust, author of Remembrance of Things Past, viewed the painting in a museum in the Hague, he pronounced it “the most beautiful painting in the world.” Over the past two centuries, the collective estimate of art critics and historians has not been far behind.

A View of Delft is a cityscape. The painting portrays the city of Delft, Holland, as seen from a southeastern perspective. From the position of the sun, it is evident that the time is early morning. In the foreground is the harbor, normally a bustling venue, but at this hour it is nearly empty, with only a stationary barge, two herring boats, and a few sailing vessels occupying its waters.  In the middle distance, the walls of the city’s brownstone and brick buildings are darkened by shadows. Its famous gates and fortifications, one of Delft’s distinctive features, are also enshadowed, their rough textures rendered by dots of paint. Higher up, however, the morning sunlight bathes the city’s roofs and steeples. Most striking is the white spire of Nieuwe Kirk, where Vermeer was baptized, a spiritual center of a thriving commercial city. Above the city are scudding clouds.

As the critic Karl Schutz has noted, A View of Delft, for all its masterly illusionism, has the feeling of a snapshot. Unlike a tranquil pastoral landscape, such as John Constable might have painted, Vermeer’s picture conveys a sense of activity frozen in time, an illusion created in part by the momentary ripples in the waters of the harbor. And though the painting possesses a serenity of its own, it is that of normal, everyday life. That effect is further enhanced by the presence of human figures in the immediate foreground, near the water. On the left, two well-dressed burghers, accompanied by two women, are waiting for the barge; not far away, two women in peasant attire are engaged in conversation. I have a reproduction of A View of Delft in my study, and whenever I stop to look at it, I am drawn to the image of those men and women and the activity they represent: casual human interaction, unhindered by the currents of political and social conflict.

James McIntosh Patrick’s The Tay Bridge from My Studio Window (1948) conveys a similar impression. McIntosh Patrick’s paintings are well-known in his native Scotland, and this picture is his most iconic work. Set in the city of Dundee, where McIntosh Patrick lived and worked, it balances a sense of intimacy against a panoramic vista.

It’s late afternoon. Long, parallel shadows thrown by a wrought-iron fence traverse the lawn in the foreground. At the gate of the fence stands the painter’s wife, who is returning from her errands. On the street, a cyclist (identified as the artist’s son) is pedaling past. A greengrocer making deliveries in his horse-drawn cart has momentarily paused. His horse stands still. On the sidewalk on the far side of the street, a man is walking his dogs, and a mother is pushing a stroller. Beyond them lies a wide sward known as Magdalen Green. Above it, the Tay Railway Bridge winds like a serpent above the Tay Estuary, where a cargo ship is making its slow passage across the water. Two locomotives pulling trains send white plumes of smoke into the overcast sky.

As the essayist Chris Arthur has observed, McIntosh Patrick’s painting creates a compelling illusion of arrested activity. In Arthur’s words, the picture leaves “a strong impression of capturing a moment.” The figures and objects in motion in the painting, particularly the cyclist, the dog walker, the cargo ship, and the steaming locomotives, though “captive in paint,” are “replete with a sense of movement.” McIntosh Patrick’s art “emphasizes the interruption of a flow.”

That it does. But like A View of Delft, it also honors the beauty waiting to be discovered in daily activities and common things. It is no accident that I also have a framed reproduction of McIntosh Patrick’s painting on my wall, where it quietly reminds me of the dignity of everyday life. The social, political, and economic ethos within which these paintings were created was no less fraught than our own, if not more so. But just as Zen monastics train themselves daily to remain in the present and to attend respectfully to ordinary things, the creators of these timeless paintings invert the news media’s conventional hierarchies of interest and value, giving precedence not to the mighty, the rich, and the warlike but to decent ordinary life.

Karl Schutz, Vermeer: The Complete Works. 45th ed. (Taschen, 2021).

Chris Arthur, What Is It Like to Be Alive? (Eastover Press, 2024), 237-258.

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Wrens’ nests

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , , on 30 April 2025| 1 Comment »

In the opening lines of his poem “Gauze,” Ted Kooser, a former Poet Laureate of the United States, asks a provocative question: “Can a man in his eighties, with cancer, / be happy?” In the remaining lines, he provides a tentative answer:

                        It seems that he can, cutting

            yesterday’s gauze dressing in pieces

–

            to scatter over the grass for the wrens

            who’ve come back again after another

            long winter and are building their nests

–

            in his birdhouses built with old boards

            that he salvaged in happiness, which he

            hammered together in happiness too.

If Kooser’s response to his own question sounds surprising, even startling, it is probably because it runs athwart conventional assumptions. In contemporary Western culture, old age is not commonly regarded as a time of exceptional happiness. On the contrary, it is often characterized as a kind of sunset: a time of loss, regret, physical indignity, and relative incapacity. Likewise, a critical, if not incurable, disease would seem incompatible with a general mood of happiness. Kooser’s pivotal use of the verb seems suggests that even he cannot quite believe what he is experiencing.

            From the vantage point of Zen teachings, however, Kooser’s experience of happiness amidst adverse conditions is not all that unusual. It seems entirely plausible. This is because Zen teachings sharply distinguish between external events and our internal responses. The former are often well out of our control. The latter are often a matter of choice, however conscious or unconscious.

            Usually, this distinction is framed as the difference between pain and conditioned suffering. Pain is what happens to us. Conditioned suffering is what we inflict upon ourselves through our reactions and responses, as when we catastrophize without sufficient evidence or engage in fearful speculation. Classical Buddhism likens the pain attendant to harsh external conditions to an arrow piercing our bodies. Our negative, conditioned responses are like a second arrow shot into the open wound.

            With respect to aging, anyone of a certain age can confirm that the first arrow and its impact are all too real. Beyond the maladies already mentioned, there may be cognitive impairments, the risk of taking a life-altering fall, or the eventual need for joint replacements, to name a few. These and other infirmities can make the lives of elderly people challenging, to say the least.

            At the same time, we have a choice. We can deny, resist, exaggerate, or otherwise worsen our afflictions.  Or we can acknowledge them, seek treatment, and, if possible, accept them for what they are. If the former response is akin to the second arrow, the latter affords at least a possible end to conditioned suffering.

            With respect to illness and disease, true acknowledgment and acceptance may be a far more complex and difficult matter. And it is also an individual one, dependent on temperament, overall health, and many other variables. For those with high pain thresholds and a cultivated tolerance for the uncertain and the unknowable, it is one thing. For those with neither, it is quite another.

            What Ted Kooser’s poem distinctively reflects is an open and curious but realistic sensibility discovering, as if for the first time, that happiness can co-exist with the realities of aging and the presence of a serious illness. It is not as if he is fully accepting either. Rather, he is implying that what Zen teachings would call contentment is ultimately not determined by externally imposed conditions. Its sources are within.

            For Kooser those sources would appear to include the pleasures of making and making do with what is at hand; the sense of being an integral part of nature rather than merely an outside observer; the exercise of imagination in returning a manufactured, disposable fabric to the natural world; and, not least, the neighborly company of wrens, one of the most comely and sonorous of North American birds.

—

Read the full text of “Gauze” in Raft (Copper Canyon Press, 2024), Ted Kooser’s most recent book.

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It’s about the music

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 2 April 2025| 2 Comments »

Andres Segovia once called the classical guitar a small orchestra. Traditionally, its back and sides are made of rosewood, its soundboard of spruce or cedar. Together with these resonant woods, its six nylon strings, three or four of them wire-wound, can produce a rich variety of tones, ranging from the velvety to the brilliant, the smoky to the metallic. Depending on where the player’s right hand is positioned, the guitar can imitate instruments as diverse as the clarinet, the cello, the flute, and the snare drum. Notes on the so-called open strings (E, A, D, G, B, E) can be played on multiple places on the fingerboard, each placement creating a distinctive timbre. Notes can also be played as harmonics, natural or artificial. Like stops on a pipe organ, these technical options greatly expand the expressive potential of the classical guitar. At the same time, they make it one of the more difficult instruments to play well. And for some players, that difficulty is only compounded when an audience is listening.

For many years, I taught classical guitar at Alfred University. I also took part in the Performing Arts Division’s annual faculty recitals. Most often I played solo pieces from the Renaissance, Baroque, Romantic, and modern repertoires. But one year I invited an advanced student to join me in a duet. For our offering I chose “My Lord Willoughby’s Welcome Home” by John Dowland (1563-1626), a stately, lyrical piece originally composed for Renaissance lute. The arrangement for guitar included an optional second part, which I asked my student to learn. That the second part was optional proved crucial to our public performance. Halfway through, my student lost his way and had to drop out, leaving me to finish the piece alone. As we left the stage, he whispered, “I’m sorry, Ben.”

There was no need to apologize. Stage fright is far more common than one might think. It has afflicted not only inexperienced amateurs but also seasoned professionals of the stature of Frederic Chopin, Vladimir Horowitz, Glenn Gould, Laurence Olivier, and Pablo Casals, to name a few. And it can strike when least expected. Those who suffer from chronic stage fright can either cease to perform publicly, as Gould chose to do, or find reliable ways to settle their nerves. Proven stratagems include controlled breathing, yoga, Tai Chi, and the repetition of a mantra.

For performers who are also Zen practitioners, the daily experience of zazen (seated meditation) can also create a foundation for dealing with stage fright, not so much by enabling a performer to “conquer” it as by learning to integrate anxiety and its physical symptoms into one’s present experience. The deep breathing developed during sitting meditation can of course be beneficial. It stimulates the vagus nerve and helps the body relax. No less important, however, are three practices intrinsic to Zen meditation, namely the cultivation of awareness, the development of presence, and the discipline of selfless contemplation.

Zen practice trains us to bring awareness to every moment of our lives. This begins with mindfulness of breathing, posture, and state of mind, but it also extends to the immediate environment: its temperature, lighting, ambient noises, and so on. For a performing soloist, the experience of stepping on stage and suddenly facing a darkened, hushed auditorium can all too easily precipitate anxiety. Becoming aware of it as soon as it arises can forestall its spiraling into a debilitating attack. Conversely, being caught unawares, as my student evidently was, can subvert and even abort the most well-rehearsed performance.

Zen practice also cultivates presence: the capacity to be continuously present for the present moment. David Russell, a contemporary master of the guitar, once noted that audiences rarely hear every note being played. It is the guitarist’s job to direct attention to the notes that matter most. And to do that, performers must themselves remain present for every note, phrase, and cadence they are playing. Doing so can make the difference between an anxious, lifeless performance and a fresh, expressive one. And because fear is so often future-based, returning to presence can also be a potent antidote to stage fright.

And last, Zen practice teaches us to align the self with things as they are, however pleasant or unpleasant. “When it’s hot, be completely hot,” one Zen master put it. In the case of musical performance, this means aligning ourselves with such intricacies as the crescendos and decrescendos, the legatos and staccatos, and, not least, the points of rest in the music we are playing. Under the pressure of performance, it is easy to forget that the activity in which we are engaged is not ultimately about ourselves. It’s about the music. And to the degree that we can forget ourselves and listen, selflessly and contemplatively, to the music’s pulse and flow, we will not only enhance our performance and garner deserved applause. We will also share with our audience the music’s inherent depth and beauty.

Photo: My 2023 Masaki Sakarai guitar

Listen to my rendition of J.S. Bach’s “Sleepers Awake” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4YbhKkq9Wk

Listen to “My Lord Wlloughby’s Welcome Home” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzYHqiZDUG4.

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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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Hosts & guests

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 20 November 2024| Leave a Comment »

Tea master“Receive a guest,” advised the Zen master Soyen Shaku (1860-1919), “with the same attitude you have when alone. When alone, maintain the same attitude you have in receiving guests.”

Zen masters’ pronouncements are often enigmatic, but this one is particularly baffling. For one thing, it seems to blur, if not collapse, the distinction between social and private conduct. What we do and say when hosting a guest may be very different from our speech and behavior when no one is in earshot and no one is watching. And rather than liberate our minds, as Zen teachings purport to do, Shaku Roshi’s admonition seems unduly restrictive. When we are alone and things go awry, the words we choose to express our frustrations may be impermissible in public discourse. And conversely, the constraints we impose upon ourselves when entertaining guests may be irrelevant to the ways we dress, speak, and act when home alone.

Yet if Shaku Roshi’s advice may be puzzling to a Western sensibility, it becomes more intelligible if understood in the context of traditional Japanese culture in general and the formal tea ceremony in particular. In that venerable ritual, traditionally conducted in a tea hut, both host and guest have prescribed roles to play. The host must assemble and arrange such essentials as a Zen slogan for the hanging scroll in the alcove, seasonal flowers, and sweets to accompany the tea. And his or her physical movements throughout the ceremony must be orchestrated down to the last detail. Little wonder that tea masters train for many years to perfect their exacting art.

On the other side of the host-guest equation, guests are expected to observe the conventional protocols. Before entering the tea hut, they cleanse their mouths in water from a stone basin. Entering, they pass through a low door, requiring even the most self-important guest to assume a posture of humility.  Once inside, guests are to bow when appropriate, to assume a kneeling posture as they prepare to be served, and to express appreciation for the beauty of the tea bowls. Together, these ritualized interactions, performed within the muted setting of the tearoom, generate an atmosphere consistent with the four principles governing the formal tea ceremony: Respect, Purity, Harmony, and Tranquility.

Such an atmosphere is as rare as it is desirable, and the conditions by which it is created may well be unique to its place and occasion. But the attitudes underlying the Way of Tea, derived primarily from the Zen tradition, may be cultivated anywhere and at any time, whether one is sitting alone in zazen (seated meditation), or hosting a public event, or having a few friends over for dinner and conversation.

Chief among those attitudes is the practice of continuous attention, which encompasses both the one-pointed attention of zazen and what is sometimes called “soft eyes”: the panoramic vision required of quarterbacks, equestrians, and soldiers on reconnaissance. Just as the tea master meticulously attends to the processes of brewing and serving tea, committed Zen practitioners strive to remain mindful throughout the day, whether they are sitting in zazen, chopping vegetables, or raking leaves. And whether they are alone or in company is largely irrelevant. Although the objects of attention will differ, the quality of attention will remain the same.

Second, Zen practitioners are encouraged to remain open to whatever is presently occurring, within and without. “Include everything,” a traditional Zen slogan, encapsulates this aspect of the practice. Contrary to popular belief, Zen is not a practice of splendid isolation. Nor is it a practice of detachment. Rather, practitioners endeavor to welcome the whole of their experience but to do so with an attitude of non-attachment. Thoughts, sensations, and feelings are allowed to arrive, endure, and dissipate on their own. Practitioners may arrive at important insights, which they can act upon at a later time. But while engaged in zazen, they aspire to a state of stillness, silence, and non-judgmental awareness. “Everything” may indeed be included, but it is not to be judged, reacted to, or pursued.

Third and last, Zen practice fosters an attitude of non-separation. “We are here,” wrote the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, “to awaken from the illusion of separateness.” Rather than view the self as separate and apart from other people, groups, and cultures, Zen teachings urge awareness of the web of interconnectedness that unites the individual with the larger human family. In similar fashion, practitioners are encouraged to treat the natural world with reverence and respect, rather than as a resource to be ruthlessly exploited.

As twenty-first century Westerners, we live in a culture far removed from medieval Japan. But in a time when sustained attention, openness, and awareness of interdependence are often in short supply, there is much to be learned from the custom of serving and receiving tea in an atmosphere of tranquility and respect. And whatever the historical and cultural distance, there is much to be said for treating both ourselves and others as honored guests.

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The perfection of character

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , , , , on 22 October 2024| 5 Comments »

Yamada Koun

“The practice of Zen,” declared Yamada Koun Roshi (1907-1989), “is the perfection of character.” To those accustomed to thinking of Zen as a means of “living in the present” or relieving stress, that stark pronouncement may come as a surprise. In any event, it merits and rewards a closer look.

To begin with, Yamada Roshi was speaking of a process, not a fait accompli. Specifically, he was referring to what are known in Zen as the paramitas, or the Perfections of Wisdom: a set of virtues that are both a focus of daily practice and an essential foundation for its long-term aims. In Zen parlance, the paramitas are the vessels that “carry” practitioners to the “other shore” of full awakening. In the Rinzai Zen tradition in which I was trained, there are six such Perfections: generosity, ethical conduct, patience, joyful effort, meditation, and wisdom. Together with other qualities of heart and mind, including compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, the Perfections comprise the ethical infrastructure on which Zen practice is based.

But how, exactly, can the central practice of Zen, namely zazen (seated meditation), contribute to the perfection of character? How can sitting quietly while following one’s breath, watching and releasing thoughts, or contemplating a koan further the development of character? And how can the “non-action” of zazen, as distinguished from virtuous actions in the world, foster the perfection of character? Of the many ways in which this can occur, I would single out three for special attention.

The backward step

In a classic text of the Soto Zen tradition (the Fukanzazengi  or Principles of Seated Meditation), Eihei Dogen (1200-1253), founder of that tradition, characterizes the practice of zazen as taking “the backward step” that “turns the light inward.” What that light illuminates, among other things, is the ever-changing states of our bodies, minds, and hearts. Our physical sensations, especially those to do with respiration; our present state of mind, whether agitated or tranquil, angry or at ease; our heart’s intentions, whether malicious or benevolent; our thoughts, however fleeting or obsessive—all are revealed to the mindful observer. Where before there were only sensations, thoughts, and feelings, now there is also awareness of those phenomena. Awareness of this kind can transform our character, insofar as it reveals what was hidden, even from ourselves. In this respect, zazen resembles the practice of prayer, in which petitioners humbly articulate their needs, longings, regrets, gratitude, and more, while seeking to atone for past misdeeds. And like the practice of prayer, zazen can nourish and advance the development of character.

Response rather than reaction

In many situations in everyday life, such as driving a car or riding a bike, it is imperative that we react instantaneously to whatever has suddenly arisen. Seeing an unaccompanied child crossing the street, we hit the brakes without hesitation. But in many other situations, such as a parent-child conflict or a domestic argument, even a moment of reflection prior to speaking or acting can make the difference between a destructive reaction and a constructive response.

By its very nature, zazen fosters the latter. The practice of sitting still and not reacting to internal or external stimuli strengthens a precious mental faculty, namely the ability to respond to unwelcome circumstances in a spirit consistent with the paramitas. By not reflexively reacting but wisely responding to such challenging affronts as insults, inflammatory remarks, and false accusations, we create opportunities to align our responses with our deepest values. We actively cultivate kshanti paramita (patience). And over time, this measured, disciplined response to adversity can deepen and fortify character.

Humility

Although Zen meditation is sometimes misconstrued as a self-centered practice, its net effect is to heighten practitioners’ sensitivity to what Paula Arai, in The Little Book of Zen Healing (Shambhala, 2023), calls “the extensive matrix of connections we all share.” That heightened sensitivity enables us to interact “with present conditions from a perspective that moves in rhythm with the circling of stars, seas, life, bones, stones, stars.” In other words, the practice of zazen reminds us not only of the interdependence of the human family but also of non-human forces larger than our ordinary selves. As Arai notes, that broadened awareness can bring relief from anxieties, insecurities, and suffering generally. And for some practitioners, it can feel like being embraced by a higher power, over which the personal self has little or no control. By so doing, zazen can reinforce our sense of humility, one of the essential components of what we in the West call character.

To be sure, Zen meditation is not for everyone. Nor is it common in our fast-paced contemporary culture. As the Zen teacher Nelson Foster observes, “Sitting silently for long hours, reciting old Asian texts, studying koans—these are hardly common behaviors in the West.” More’s the pity, I might submit, if so simple, accessible, and enjoyable a practice can indeed equate with the gradual perfection of character.

Paula Arai, The Little Book of Zen Healing: Japanese Rituals for Beauty, Harmony, and Love (Shambhala, 2023), 88, 106.

Nelson Foster, Storehouse of Treasures: Recovering the Riches of Chan & Zen (Shambhala, 2024), 31.

Photo: Yamada Koun Roshi

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No front or back

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , , on 15 October 2024| Leave a Comment »

Foster Lake Crosby

Few words in the English language are as multidimensional in meaning or as laden with emotion as the word integrity. Derived from the Latin integer, the English word integrity has three distinct, established meanings. In its most common usage, integrity is synonymous with honesty, incorruptibility, and fidelity to a set of principles and values. It is another word for character. But integrity can also refer to the soundness of a structure, as when speaking of the structural integrity of a building or a car. And last, integrity can refer to the wholeness and completeness of an entity, be it a poem or play or novel, as when Aristotle describes a well-made Greek tragedy as depicting “one action and the whole of it.”

In his essay “Putting Integrity Back into Integrity,” the Zen teacher Nelson Foster simplifies this complex confluence of meanings by dividing it into two primary domains: the private and the public. Two halves of a whole, these two versions of integrity differ sharply in perspective, context, and implications. And though they sometimes overlap, they can also be at cross purposes, if not diametrically opposed

“To thine own self be true /” King Claudius’s chief minister, Polonius, advises his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.” According to this view, the essence of integrity is fidelity to one’s thoughts and feelings at any given moment. Maintain that fidelity, and your speech will flow naturally from whatever animates your heart and mind. That your present words may flatly contradict what you expressed years—or days—before is of little consequence. The important thing, in contemporary American parlance, is to “speak your truth,” whatever its fallout or its impact on others. “A foolish consistency,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in his classic essay “Self-Reliance” (1841), “is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Consistent or otherwise, what matters most in this view is the heart’s truth, fearlessly expressed. Little wonder that this concept of integrity has prevailed in American culture since Emerson’s time, grounded as we are in the tenets of individual autonomy and freedom.

In stark contrast, the public version of integrity places the highest value on consistency, which is to say, on keeping one’s promises and being true to one’s word. According to this view, whatever private thoughts or personal sentiments we might harbor, the criteria by which our integrity will and should be judged are the alignment of our words with our deeds, the constancy of our public record, and our proven capacity to “stay the course,” even when confronted with adversity or changing conditions. Integrity in this sense tends to inspire trust, in a way that the private version of integrity cannot. And though we may embrace the ideal of being true to ourselves when it is ourselves we are being true to, we hold our public officials to a quite different standard. “Flip-flopping” earns no points with potential voters and may even be regarded as a disqualifying trait in a candidate for public office.

Foster’s analysis is useful and illuminating. If nothing else, it highlights the depth and complexity of a concept most of us take for granted. But as Foster subsequently explains, in authentic, long-term Zen practice, the duality of private and public gradually disappears. Over time, the daily practice of zazen (seated meditation) reveals, beyond all doubt, the causal connection between ego-centered, unwholesome thoughts and potential harm to others and oneself. And in mature Zen practitioners, who have learned to release such thoughts and to refrain from nurturing destructive states of mind, there is eventually no need to hide one’s inner life or construct an acceptable public persona. As an old Zen saying has it, in the realized masters there is “no front or back”: no ulterior motives or hidden agendas to be concealed, no deceitful public image to preserve. Transparent to themselves, Zen masters of the likes of Thich Nhat Hanh are also transparent to the world. Their integrity, in the original sense of unity, completeness, and wholeness, can be intuitively felt as well as rationally surmised.

Like most discussions of integrity, Foster’s is framed in ethical terms. He is mainly concerned with right and wrong. But it bears mentioning that integrity can also have a profoundly aesthetic dimension. There are few sights uglier, in my estimation, than bald-faced hypocrisy, conscienceless corruption, and shameless perfidy, whether those qualities of character—or the utter lack of it—appear in the public or the private sphere. Conversely, genuine integrity is a thing of beauty. If moral depravity calls to mind a stagnant cesspool, true integrity resembles a clear lake on an autumn day. Radiant and unruffled, it reflects things as they are.

Nelson Foster, Storehouse of Treasures: Recovering the Riches of Chan & Zen (Shambhala, 2024), 49-62

Photo: Foster Lake, Alfred, New York. Photo by Stephen Crosby.

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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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