Tales of a Mad Yogi: The Life and Wild Wisdom of Drukpa Kunley
by Elizabeth Monson
Snow Lion, August 2021, $19.95, 256 pp., paper

Searching for a PhD dissertation topic, Monson stumbled on the 15th-century monk Drukpa Kunley, revered as a saint in Bhutan but little known elsewhere. She spent two years in Bhutan, translating two books of his writings and then touring the country, collecting tales of his exploits. And what tales they were. Drukpa Kunley was a drunken womanizer and reprobate whose outrageous behavior defined “crazy wisdom.” Asked to write a biography, Monson demurred: Not enough facts. But then, armed with her research, she took a daring plunge, creating a magical realism–infused narrative about a Buddhist master unlike any other.

The Guru Principle: A Guide to the Teacher-Student Relationship in Buddhism
by Shenpen Hookham
Shambhala Publications, August 2021, $16.95, 208 pp., paper

The guru, or trusted teacher, is an integral part of Buddhist practice, especially in the Vajrayana tradition. But the devotional path isn’t for everyone, and for newcomers the teacher-student relationship can be confusing, even fraught. The author, an Englishwoman ordained by the 16th Karmapa, is sympathetic to Westerners’ concerns. Covering basics like the need for a teacher and how to choose the right one, she goes on to describe in detail a teacher’s many roles, from giving practice instruction and spiritual advice to challenging the student’s ego. She also tackles controversial topics like student abuse.

Wisdom Is Bliss: Four Friendly Fun Facts That Can Change Your Life
by Robert Thurman
Hay House, August 2021, $19.95, 232 pp., cloth

Thurman, one of America’s best-known Buddhist scholars, is at his most accessible in this Buddhist primer—one that views the tradition not as a religion but as a rational approach to life. The “four friendly facts” are the four noble truths; the eightfold path is a “highway with eight lanes” that are not “right” but “realistic.” Grounded in traditional dharma, the teachings shine brightest through everyday examples, many from Thurman’s life. As a teacher, he’s famed for his exuberant delivery, on full display here. The wide-ranging, rapid-fire writing may be dizzying at first, but the reward is a never-dull romp through Buddhism 101.

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Scholar’s Corner

The Record of Empty Hall: One Hundred Classic Koans
by Xutang Zhiyu; translated with commentary by Dosho Port
Shambhala Publications, February 2020, $18.95, 320 pp., paper

The Chinese Chan master Xutang Zhiyu (1185–1269), a monk in the Linji school, was a key figure in the transmission of Rinzai Zen to Japan. His collection of Zen koans is as well regarded as The Blue Cliff Record and The Gateless Gate, though much less familiar to Western readers. This translation by Dosho Port Roshi is only the second ever made in English, and all but six of the cases are previously unpublished, making this an invaluable resource. Dosho’s translations are clear and his commentary deceptively straightforward. But koans are not solved by ordinary reason: study with a Zen master is the established way in.

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WHAT WE’RE REREADING

World as Lover, World as Self
by Joanna Macy

Revisiting a book can trigger nostalgia. But Joanna Macy, a seminal voice of engaged Buddhism and deep ecology now in her nineties, invites no such reminiscing in the 30th anniversary edition of World as Lover, World as Self. In this, the third edition, she hasn’t just updated the contents; she’s all but written a new book. Familiar themes remain: social engagement, love for the Earth, Interbeing. But they’re woven into the narrative of Macy’s ever- evolving advocacy of transformation in times of crisis. Buddhism, the substrate of Macy’s life since the ’60s, figures even larger here than in the original, though she has cut a few dharmic passages. No matter. Macy’s passion still lights up the page, a reminder that enlightened activism never goes out of style.

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A koan is a surprising or paradoxical word or phrase, taken from an anecdote, that is used as an object of meditation in traditions descended from Chinese Chan Buddhism, like Japanese Zen. Contemplating these words is part of the training given by a teacher to help a Buddhist student to awaken.

The word koan is a spelling of Chinese gong’an, meaning “public record” or “legal precedent,” and also means “story.” Most of the koans used today come from several collections of gong’an dating back to 12th- and 13th-century China; the best-known collections have been translated many times and are found in English under titles like The Gateless Gate and The Blue Cliff Record. In these anthologies, each story—usually an exchange between two Buddhist masters or between master and student—is paired with elucidating commentary, a brief encapsulation of the point, lines of verse, and sometimes commentary on the verse.

The tradition of koan study may vary in some ways in different schools of Zen, but in the form most familiar to us in the West, students are given a koan (which may be more or less well known) and are asked to demonstrate to the teacher their comprehension of its meaning. When habitual thinking or reasoning leads nowhere, students will begin to “sit with” the koan and ultimately bring the teacher a direct or spontaneous “answer” that reflects their Zen training. In some schools, a student may work on a koan for years, or may need to work through a traditional list of koans.

You may have heard some of the more celebrated koans, such as “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” or “Show me your face before your parents were born.” One famous example of a single-word koan derives from a 10th-century Chinese story in which a student asks the renowned master Chao-chou (Japanese, Joshu) whether a dog has buddhanature (the potential for awakening) and the master replies, “Wu!”—in Japanese “Mu!” (emptiness). This surprising answer has catalyzed practitioners’ meditation, self-questioning, and development of insight for all these centuries, and the koan is still given to students today.

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I am not saying that comedians are enlightened Zen masters (though who knows?—there may be some incognito bodhisattvas among us). Nor do I want to belittle the great Zen tradition by reducing it to an alternative series about the contemporary comedy circuit. But Americans treat Zen with such obsequious reverence that they often fail to realize that many of these guys were really funny characters, and that much of Zen discourse is based on their witty repartee and blistering one-upmanship.

I use the words “guys” and “one-upmanship” deliberately here, since funny Zen nuns and laywomen in Buddhist history are not well represented in the literature. There are some exceptional examples, such as the nameless woman selling rice cakes by the roadside who cleverly bests the proud Diamond Sutra scholar Deshan Xuanjian, but her gender is part of the joke. The moral of the story is that if even a simple woman can outsmart you, then you really need to up your game. Likewise today, Jerry’s guests are overwhelmingly male, as well as positively pumped to be driven around the streets of New York or Los Angeles in classic sports cars to go eat hot dogs or smoke cigars.

Besides male dominance, the traditions share other characteristics as well. Like Zen monks, stand-up comics have their own professional periods of itinerancy, their own mentoring networks, inside jokes, and a kind of certifying transmission based on their first appearance on a late-night talk show or Saturday Night Live season. For comedians and monks alike, the process of studying human nature, gathering material, and perfecting their lines is a lifelong practice and way of being in the world. They both also learn from the masters and then overturn that received knowledge, subverting expectations and articulating their own idiosyncratic take on reality. And monks drank a lot of tea back then, which is kind of equivalent to today’s consumption of coffee.

Stand-up bits also often reveal an underlying understanding of the first two noble truths of Buddhism: that life inevitably involves suffering, and that much of it is caused by our own self-interested folly. While some dark humorists, like Garry Shandling, may have explicit connections to Buddhist thought and practice, plenty of others possess this same tragicomic sense. Get a couple of them together, and they’ll riff off each other relentlessly.

As a result, the unscripted banter on Comedians in Cars is peppered with great Zen-like zingers. This is similar to the format of Zen’s capping phrases, when a master would take a verse, koan, or commentary by a previous master and cap it off with his own crowning punchline or fresh twist on the matter. For example, the 9th-century Chinese master Yunmen took up one of the most profound questions of his day, “What is Buddha?” and irreverently blurted out, “a dry shit-stick!” (They wiped with bamboo sticks back then, not TP.) His potty humor was later capped off by Master Dongshan’s (Jp., Tozan) quip that Buddha was nothing other than the “three pounds of flax” that he was then making into a Buddhist robe. The upshot? Buddha is right before your eyes, you idiot.

Or when asked “Does a dog have buddhanature?” the Chinese master Zhaozhou (Jp., Joshu) reportedly barked out “Wu!” (Jp., Mu). It’s never funny if you have to explain the joke, but basically, “Wu” in the original Chinese is a double entendre literally meaning “No” (in other words, a dog doesn’t have buddhanature) but also indicating “Yes” since wu is the Chinese word for “emptiness,” the definition of enlightenment itself. The joke works on another level as well since the pronunciation of “Wu!” is the Chinese onomatopoeic equivalent of “woof!” (although the barked-out delivery got lost when it traveled to Japan). Zhaozhou’s startling response thus collapses the distinction between human and nonhuman, “Yes” and “No” answers, into an open field that’s empty but full of possibility.

In another duality-dissolving koan about killing or not killing a cat, Zhaozhou capped off the impossible standoff between life and death by walking out of the room with his sandals on his head instead of his feet. We can imagine his teacher, Nanquan, cracking up as he approved of his star pupil’s brilliant sight gag that cut through the tension of the live-or-die situation. Sometimes sheer silliness (not to mention a profound grasp of nondualism) is the best solution to seriousness.

The 18th-century Japanese Zen master Hakuin also knew how to provoke a good belly laugh. He claims to have cured his case of “Zen sickness” (zenbyo) by focusing his qi energy down in the lower abdomen during meditation, increasing his physical exertion, and essentially not taking things so seriously anymore. The result was an extraordinary artistic output that parodied and deflated the Zen tradition of its own importance. For example, Hakuin’s brushed ink caricature of Zen’s great founding father, the first patriarch Bodhidharma, depicts him with a furrowed unibrow, bulging eyes, flaring nostrils, facial hair, long-lobed ears, and copious amounts of body hair. These details all make fun of Bodhidharma’s Indian features and his irascible demeanor, and prove that for Hakuin at least, laughter really is the best medicine.

Related: Crazy Clouds: Zen Radicals, Revels and Reformers

Bodhidharma was a fitting subject for satire, as he himself used Zen humor to speak truth to power. According to Zen lore, when Emperor Wu of China asked how much karmic merit his imperial patronage for Buddhism had generated, Bodhidharma reputedly replied “None (wu)” or alternatively, “it’s all empty (wu).” The befuddled and outraged emperor missed the main message—that he needed to detach from the results of his empty actions—and blustered, “Who do you think you are?” Bodhidharma capped it off with “I don’t know” and left the court.

Centuries later, it’s easy to think of these Zen masters as stoically sitting above life’s trifles. But they were still people—and sometimes very silly people at that. Each one had a personal, quirky capping style; from Yunmen’s scatological approach to Zhaouzhou’s witty tack, and from Hakuin’s caricatures to Bodhidharma’s deadpan delivery. That doesn’t make them any less wise. In fact, if there really is truth in comedy, maybe there must also be comedy in truth.

The post Ha Ha Zen appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Begin by watching the breath. Observe its rhythm, its quality. Maybe it is shallow and strained. Notice smells, like air-conditioning tinged with exhaust, or the unmistakable whiff of Cheetos and strawberry BubbleYum wafting up from the back seat of the car. Breathe in it. Recognize any emotions that come up, such as doubt, regret, or fear. After a few moments, open your eyes. You will still be in traffic, staring at the tall sign of the amusement park a half-mile away.

Early in the trip, discover abundant moments to practice stillness: idling in traffic at the front gate, and again in the parking lot. There’s also all the time you spend waiting in line for tickets, waiting in line for the restroom, waiting back at the ticket counter, and then back at the restroom, and later on the bench outside the restroom, where you wait for your spouse, who is somewhere near the back of the line.

After an hour or so, notice the Ferris wheel. Skip toward it. Climb into the car and sit there like an excited little kid. Wait until the Ferris wheel starts moving to remember that you don’t enjoy Ferris wheels. Listen to your stomach start to bubble and fuss. Take a moment to contemplate samsara. Remember how you always think it will be fun to ride the Ferris wheel, and then every time it starts moving, you feel overtaken by nausea and dread. Also take note of your habitual decision to ride the Ferris wheel after rapidly consuming a funnel cake and orange soda.

Notice any emotions that come up. On second thought, don’t think about things coming up. Focus on the horizon and stay with the breath.

Stumble off the Ferris wheel. Your kid will pull you toward the log flume. Pretend to be astonished—not horrified—as you watch as two people sitting in a plastic toy log plunge down a steep hill and coast into the water with a giant splash. Casually walk up to the person controlling the ride, who looks about 15 years old. Ask him a thoughtful, articulate question about the maximum speed of the log. Hangonjustasec as he finishes his text.

“I dunno,” he will say as he guides an empty log toward you and your son. “I guess it’s like, fast, man.” Watch this response delight your kid, who pulls you into the log. Reach for the seat belt and discover there are no restraints. As the flume slowly pulls away from the steady, unwavering shore, observe how your rapidly rising fear of death drowns out the squeals of excitement coming from your kid. When he turns around and asks you if you’re okay, tell him the truth, which is no, then yes, then no again. Now is a perfect time to embrace uncertainty.

Observe your breath as you and your kid ascend a gigantic hill. Listen to your labored exhale. Notice your fear of death start to transform into a simple and slightly hopeful inevitability; there are, after all, endless rebirth possibilities. Perhaps you’ll return as a cactus, or an eagle, or a table lamp—something that could never set foot in a park like this.

Right before the drop, your kid will casually raise both arms in the air, turn around, and tell you to let go. Let go? Debate whether your kid is very stupid or very wise.

You will plunge. You will scream. You will survive.

You will be tired. Your clothes will be wet. Remember that all things are impermanent: the emotions consuming you, your energy, your voice, your money. Seek refuge. Tell your spouse that you’re just going to nap in the car for a few minutes. Or a few hours. Take the keys. Turn around and walk toward what you think is the exit. Discover the janitor’s quarters. Turn the other way. Ask a person wearing a chipmunk costume where the exit is. The chipmunk will squeak three times and point to the direction you just came from. Meander down a narrow, bush-lined path that opens to the infinite expanse of the main parking lot.

Walk quickly to the section where you parked, DB154. Or was it UM240? Turn in circles. Spot a car that looks like yours. “The car!” you cry aloud, both shocked and proud that it only took you 20 minutes to find it. Point your clicker toward said car and try to unlock it. Wait in the vast silence of the parking lot. Walk up to the car, peer inside and notice the spotless interior, devoid of Cheetos crumbs and BubbleYum wrappers. Walk in the other direction. Spot your car. The car! Point, click, wait. Silence. Turn around. Walk away. The car! Point, click, wait. Silence.

Discover the car by recognizing the exhausted pile of humans sitting next to it. “We’ve been waiting for 45 minutes,” your spouse will say. This is not a complaint, but rather a statement of wonder and bewilderment. “Where have you been?” the kids will ask. Do not respond. Climb into the car. Your family will fall asleep within seconds.

Realize that your kid’s question was a koan. Where have you been? Realize that you will have at least an hour of sitting in standstill traffic on the way out of the park to try and enlighten yourself with an answer.

[This post was originally published on August 14, 2016]

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The exact reasons that caused the monk to ask his question in this koan are unknown, but whatever the particulars were, we can all relate to circumstances that make us feel as if we’ve lost our center. The point of this koan is simple: when heavy rain and violent winds assault you, you know to seek the nearest shelter. How is it that you know what to do in a storm, and yet in other situations, you feel as if you have lost any sense of what to do?

As a member of the Zen Peacemaker Order, I have come to rely on what we refer to as the Three Tenets, which are Not-Knowing, Bearing Witness, and Taking Action, as an effective way to hold to the center in any given situation. With regular application, the practice of the Three Tenets can become a way of living from the center at all times. Although the tenets are taken in order when you study them, the practice is not necessarily linear. Each tenet reflects the others; they are seamlessly embedded in each other, flowing as center, circumstance, and action in an ever-unfolding and endlessly varied circle of life.

The first of the Three Tenets, Not-Knowing, can be described as the letting go of fixed ideas about yourself, others, and the universe. Difficult circumstances—political upheaval, the sudden loss of a loved one, or the unexpected termination of your job—can make life feel suddenly unstable. But actually, according to the Buddha, things are always unstable. It’s just that we have a tendency to live life from a set of unquestioned beliefs that make our lives feel solid: we believe that politics will always operate along the status quo, for instance, or that our children will outlive us, or that our plans for the future will come to fruition. The truth is, once you start to pay careful attention to the nature of life, you will begin to question all of your beliefs. How can you know what will happen next? You can’t—because the universe, from its tiniest particles to its largest forms, is continually in flux.

In Three Tenets practice, not-knowing trains you to continually set aside fixed points of view. I describe not-knowing as a flash of openness or a sudden shift to being present in the moment. This dropping away of the things you have relied upon for a sense of stability may lead you to examine what you believe is your center. A student told me of a time, for example, when he was pruning his climbing rose, which he had painstakingly trained to grow up the drain pipe along the front of his house. He was standing on tiptoe on an old tree stump snipping away when suddenly the stump collapsed under him and he fell into the rose vine. As the thorns and entangled vines wrapped themselves around him, he realized that what he had thought was a stable center was actually a rotted stump. You may have had this exact same experience of realizing not-knowing when the ground you stood on has dropped out from under you.

Recent times in particular have thrust many people into a state of not-knowing. I received this email after the Fall 2016 U.S. election from a student: “These days things are so destabilized that it is hard to even find the center. . . . So many of my mental yardsticks of how the world works have been called into question, or have just unraveled in front of my eyes, [that] it is hard to get my bearings in this ‘new world order.’ . . . All frames of perspective seem unstable to me.”

In a world of instability, where is shelter to be found? The answer is what Ying’an Tanhua was pointing to when he said in his commentary that not-knowing is like that which precedes the kalpa of emptiness. The kalpa of emptiness is “the kalpa that lies between the destruction of one universe and the formation of the next.” In other words, to hold to the center in this view is to take shelter in the place before anything arises, a place of emptiness and profound silence, a place of the deepest rest where self-interest has not yet entered. This is not a void, but rather a darkness where things are not yet differentiated or seen. You yourself can go to the darkness and become like an empty vessel, empty of points of view and preferences. An empty vessel refuses nothing and receives everything that is coming at it from all directions. By practicing in this way, you can create more space to accommodate your own reactivity and the points of view of others.

It should be said that the not-favoring-of-viewpoints that arises when one practices not-knowing does not demonstrate a lack of caring. Rather, not favoring any one thing over another allows you to center yourself within a boundless net of interconnection and to expand your circle of caring. My root teacher Maezumi Roshi would often say to me, “I don’t ask you to give up your ideas, but at least set them aside for a while. You can pick them up again later.” In this way, the practice of not-knowing can align you with the ever-changing interconnected reality called Life. Practicing not-knowing may seem impossible to do, and yet, when you realize that life itself excludes nothing, practicing not-knowing over time will enable you to become more aware of what you choose to let in and open to what you had previously excluded.

Bearing Witness to the joy and suffering of the world is the second tenet. The practice of bearing witness is to see all of the aspects of a situation including your attachments and judgments. You cannot live solely in a state of not- knowing, because life also asks that you face the conditions that are coming at you by being present to them. When you bear witness you open to the uniqueness of whatever is arising and meet it just as it is. When combined with not-knowing, bearing witness can strengthen your capacity for spaciousness, thus enabling you to be present to the very things that make you feel as if you have lost your center. It can strengthen your capacity to listen to other points of view, thus allowing a more nuanced picture of a situation to emerge.

In the koan, the monk is bearing witness to all the things coming at him from all directions, and Master Xinghua himself bears witness to the storm. In translating Xinghua’s direction to “hold to the center,” the word “hold” is the Chinese word da. Da, an emphatic, can also be translated as “aim,” “hit,” or “strike.” So “hold to the center” can also be rendered as “strike the center,” “aim to the center,” or “hit the center.” The phrase “hold to” can seem passive, but consider that Xinghua is directing you to actively engage the center of not-knowing and from there to bear witness to all that is coming at you.

Buddhist meditation trains you to bear witness by strengthening your awareness of thoughts, feelings, and sensations as they arise and pass. As your awareness strengthens, you begin to experience spaciousness and stability and see that you have a choice in your response to what is arising. Over time, you learn to bear witness to all the elements that are arising with a curious and compassionate attitude. This does not mean repressing the strong emotions that arise or stopping the escape into story drama, but rather being aware of what you are choosing to feed. A wise old tale often attributed to the Cherokee warns that when many demons are struggling inside you, the one that you feed is the one that will become the strongest. You alone are responsible for what you feed. Will you keep feeding the poisons, such as greed and hatred, or will you develop the spiritual strength through your spiritual practice that will help you to bear witness in the midst of strong reactivity and to hold to the center?

When I recently conducted a public face-to-face in my Zen community, a longtime spiritual practitioner, wearing a yarmulke over his silver hair, came forward and took the seat beside me. He began by saying, “Hitler is my teacher. He has been my teacher for all of my life.” He then shared with the group for the first time the harrowing account of his childhood. From the ages of 7 to 9, this young boy and his family members were hidden by a Polish family in a small covered-dirt pit on their farm. They lived in this darkness for two years until World War II ended. Since then, he has been wrestling with the effects of those years in the pit: bearing witness has indeed been the practice of a lifetime for him.

On this Sunday when we were bearing witness together to his story, his shining eyes and glowing face exuded an unshakeable peace. Although the account was difficult to absorb, the act of witnessing together formed a collective center. The group itself became an empty vessel of stillness and silence into which he poured the suffering of his lifetime. When he stood up and returned to his seat, he said softly, as if to himself, “I guess I have come to accept all of it.” He had experienced a sense of wholeness by bearing witness to the parts of his life that were previously present but not fully accepted. With the passage of years spent struggling with all of the particulars of his situation, which led to a new understanding of it, this man who survived the horrors of his youth is now at peace with himself.

Bearing witness can allow you to eventually come to terms with the most difficult life circumstances. The practice is always available to you regardless of the time, place, situation, or people involved.

There is nothing you cannot bear witness to, from dusting the lint off your sweater to living in a pit for two years.

In bearing witness, you are actively engaged and embodied, even struggling, with whatever is arising. Sometimes spiritual practices can have a neutralizing effect, flattening feelings rather than stimulating them. To hold to the center is not about becoming a spiritual zombie; it is about living the fullness of your own humanity. You are alive, so be fully alive.

The third tenet is Taking Action. It is impossible to predict what the action in any situation will be, or the timetable for when it will arise or what might result from it. The underlying intention is that the action that arises be a caring action, which serves everyone and everything, including yourself, in the whole situation.

Sometimes the action is as simple as continuing on with the practice of the first two tenets of not-knowing and bearing witness; the very practice of the Three Tenets is itself a caring action. You could say that Master Xinghua took action by seeking shelter in an old shrine.

Or that the public sharing of the story of two years in the pit was an action taken after decades spent bearing witness. And though the action that arises from the engagement of not-knowing and bearing witness is spontaneous and often surprising, it always fits the situation perfectly. One student told me that when her landlord delivered a notice of a rent increase, she was overcome by despair as memories were triggered of her being left alone on the street with her clothes as a child. During the days following the rent increase, she bore witness to her painful feelings of abandonment. After a few days, she decided to go to one of her favorite places for lunch. When she entered the eatery, she saw a dirty, disheveled man incoherently mumbling and turning his pockets inside out for money. To her, this man embodied all the despair she had been bearing witness to over the past few days. Without hesitation and unnoticed by the man, she told the cashier to give him what he wanted and that she would pay for it. In that moment of spontaneous action, she returned to herself and a sense of her center for the first time since receiving the rent increase notice.

Training with the tenets is a matter of taking a backward step again and again and continually discerning your internal processes in the midst of acknowledging what is happening around you. When you hold to the center by engaging these tenets, you let go of preconceived agendas about what needs to happen and your need to make it happen.

The practice of the Three Tenets can become a way of living at the center at all times. An effect of ongoing and consistent practice of the Three Tenets is that when you lose your sense of center and fall into reactivity, you also regain your center more quickly. And when you continually perform this practice in the midst of all the activities of your daily life, the practice will be readily accessible to you during the most challenging circumstances.

Training with the tenets brings about resiliency of the spiritual muscles and an ever-deepening sense of reality. As life unfolds around you, the Three Tenets are active inside of you, always directing you back to the center, so that you carry out Xinghua’s directive.

When things come at you from all directions, hold to the center!

The post Hold to the Center! appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

(Meta)Physical Education is a series about the lessons that Alex Tzelnic, a Zen practitioner, has learned while teaching gym at a Montessori school. You can read more of Tzelnic’s stories here. 

In The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote, “Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.” If that’s the case, my students must be exhausted.

After a decade in the business, we’ve achieved something of a role reversal. “Why?” I always ask them, like an eternally curious toddler who has just learned the word. I ask because their answers are magnificent. I’m reminded of a scene in The Office when Steve Carell says to an employee who just brought him a financial report, “Why don’t you explain it to me like I’m 8?” After the explanation, Carell pauses and then says, “Why don’t you explain it to me like I’m 5?”

Luckily for you, I have recorded these explanations. What follows are real-life koans, teacher-student exchanges that reinforce my belief in questioning. Because when the answers come from a kid, they’re usually pretty good.

Case 12: Roses are Red
A teacher was at the playground with a group of students when one of the students approached.

“Note to self,” said the student. “Don’t touch any relatives of roses.”

“What if you want to give someone flowers?” asked the teacher.

“Give them a bouquet,” answered the student. “That way it’s wrapped up and the thorns don’t get you.”

The teacher commended the student for his wisdom and the student ran off, punching the air.

Then he ran back.

“I’m kind of in love with Tara,” said the student.

“Oh!” said the teacher, surprised. “Thanks for sharing.”

“I want to give her a snapdragon. The petals are blue and purple, which are the colors of love.”

The teacher never again doubted the emotional capacity of a first-year. Also, he thought, I should really get my wife some snapdragons.

♦ ♦ ♦

Case 27: God, Fish, and Lies

A teacher and several students sat next to a pond. One little girl, no older than 4, was eating her lunch in the sand.

“Did you know God is not telling the truth about where the world came from?” she suddenly asked.

“Oh no,” said the teacher. “Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know,” said the girl.

“How do you know he’s not telling the truth?” asked the teacher.

“My mom told me,” said the girl. “He’s lying about making the world.”

“Hmm,” said the teacher. “I wonder where it came from.”

“From the fish?” offered the girl.

“Maybe,” said the teacher, nodding thoughtfully.

“But someone had to make the fish,” pointed out the girl.

“Oh yeah, good point,” said the teacher. “Who do you think did that?”

“I don’t know,” said the girl, and she returned to her lunch.

A breeze ruffled the surface of the pond, underneath which schools of fish swam, searching for their own lunch.

Case 46: Lemonade
A teacher observed two students sitting on a basketball court in the summer sun, talking about lemonade.

“What is this even made of?” asked one girl, taking a sip.

“Actually,” said the other girl, “the lemonade is made out of the same stuff as you are. You’re both made of . . . ”—and then she dropped her voice to a whisper— “atoms!”

The teacher never again took a glass of lemonade for granted.

Case 83: Tadpole Delirium
A teacher was walking with two students by a swamp. They spotted tadpoles writhing about in the shallows and paused to watch them. The tadpoles swam between rocks, under sticks, and through high grasses. Suddenly, two tadpoles collided and the boy exclaimed, “They just kissed or something!”

“Maybe,” said the girl, unimpressed. “But they’re probably just delirious from the heat.”

The teacher laughed. Wasn’t all kissing a form of delirium? A restless intoxication produced by heat? He had to concede that the girl’s response could be true, metaphorically speaking. Then again, it was really hot out. Maybe the tadpoles simply had a form of tadpole heat stroke. The teacher pondered this literal and metaphorical tension over an iced coffee.

Case 97: How to Survive a Tornado       
A teacher entered a classroom to ask another teacher a question. He found that teacher engaged in conversation with a couple of students.

“They’re writing a report on what to do in the event of the tornado,” explained the teacher.

“Oh,” said the first teacher. “That is useful information. I was once almost caught in a tornado and had no idea what to do.”

The next day the report on how to survive a tornado was waiting in the teacher’s mailbox. He flipped through, gleaning the helpful information and enjoying the illustrations. He got to the page that explained what to do:

1. Find an adult
2. Stay calm
3. If needed, take yourself through meditation

Read the first installment of “Kids Sat the Dharmdest Things”

The post Kids Say the Dharmdest Things, Part II appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The word inauguration reaches back to the Roman Republic. There the prophecies of augurs—state oracles—guided decisions of great consequence. In our modern-day republic, the word has come to mean nothing more than the swearing in of another president. But this inauguration takes us closer to the word’s archaic roots: like the ancient Romans who watched birds in flight, straining to detect a signal from the gods, millions of Americans are waiting for the future to reveal its shape. What should we expect?

This world is burning, the Buddha declared in the Adittapariyaya Sutta: “Bhikkhus, all is burning. . . . Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion.”

The Buddha himself had seen the “fire” up close. Near the end of his long career, the Shakya Republic, his native land, fell to the army of a neighboring state, whose leader then deliberately set out to exterminate the losers. Nine centuries later, in 403 CE, when the Chinese pilgrim-monk Faxian arrived at the Shakyas’ capital, he found only “desolation,” splendid neighborhoods reduced to dusty mounds, wolves and lions prowling alleyways.

The Buddha’s kinsmen were the victims of a genocide, yet he persisted in the work he’d taken on since the time of his enlightenment, instructing anyone who asked for his help. His message remained the same as well: “Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.”  

What the Buddha didn’t say, however, might be as important as what he did. He never predicted the coming of a day when hatred would disappear from human affairs. Instead, he assumed the very opposite.

By contrast, we Americans have long believed existence is perfectible—a straight line from savagery to utopia. That’s one reason this election came as such a shock to so many of us. When the Flower Ornament Sutra describes greed, anger, and delusion as “beginningless,” it also implies these will never end. Surely this is true.

Arriving in China in 838, the Japanese monk Ennin expected to begin practicing with the leading teachers. Instead, he found a country in advanced decay, unable to recover from a civil war that had killed, according to some estimates, two out of every three people. And now, the sangha was under siege, thousands of monks and nuns defrocked, buildings aflame, statues melted down or deliberately defaced.  

The instigator of all this was Emperor Wuzong, a fearful, power-hungry narcissist whose attacks on foreigners and their ideas helped to end China’s brightest period. Urged on by the Confucian elite and Daoist fanatics, Wuzong ransacked temple treasuries to pay for costly wars at China’s borders.

And yet, if we flash forward just half a century, everything looks different. The greatest masters of the Tang dynasty—Zhaozhou, Dongshan, Yangshan, Linji—lived through the terror and began to recreate the dharma in ways the world had never seen. One of Zen’s most vibrant periods followed heartbreaking destruction.

How was this achievement possible?  Why didn’t these great masters fall into despair?   

A clue can be found in the anthology of koans or Zen stories known as the Blue Cliff Record.  Case 29 relates this exchange between Daizui and a monk:

[The] monk asked Daizui, “When the great kalpa fire arrives and the whole universe will be destroyed, will THIS also be destroyed or not?”  Daizui said, “Destroyed!”

Zen teaching holds that when the kalpa fire comes to incinerate the universe at the end of the present world age, absolutely everything will be destroyed. Naturally, we’d like to think that something will persist, but no—the teaching is that everything must go.

There’s a caveat, however: everything comes back again in a different form. Nothing stays the same, but THIS returns, indestructibly. And THIS is where we have to plant our feet, no matter how close the fire draws. When we ask, “What should we do now?” the answer is always, “Start again.”

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In the tradition of Mary Oliver and David Whyte, Dick Allen’s Zen Master Poems (Wisdom Publications, August 2016, $14.00, 152 pp., paper) offers spiritual insights in lucid, seemingly effortless verse. Most poems in the collection are a page in length with short, four- or five-word lines, allowing each poem in the collection to function as a koan: an object of meditation purified to its most essential observations. The lines seem to echo the natural inhale and exhale of zazen.

In the preface, Allen (who served as Connecticut’s poet laureate from 2010 to 2015) describes the Zen master speaker of the poems as his “alter-ego,” a voice he was able to hear after studying the koans of the Blue Cliff Record and viewing Asian art at the Yale Art Museum. “At times in a semi-trance, at times in a willed act of identification,” the anonymous Zen master and his poems slowly “found” Allen, and in turn, the poems find us.

Intimate yet expansive, the poetry addresses a range of subjects familiar to us from the canon of Zen poetry. Allen arrests us with the candor of seeing things in their “thusness,” from the rituals of flower arrangement and calligraphy to the still-life images of a teacup, a branch of cherry blossoms, and a lotus. Through the transparency of the poet’s insight, we too come to be “told by every stone and branch and leaf / that the meeting place of Heaven and Earth / has always been the human body.” As a stepping stone from the practice of Zen to the act of truly living it, Zen Master Poems would be well placed beside the zafu or within reach of the living room altar.

In 1977, a small, nonsectarian group of mostly Western students convened in Boudhanath—Buddhism’s great pilgrimage site in Nepal—to receive the teachings and ask questions of Kyabje Thinley Norbu Rinpoche (1931–2011), an eminent scholar and master of the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Echoes: The Boudhanath Teachings (Shambhala Publications, May 2016, $18.95, 176 pp., paper) is composed of edited transcripts from that series of meetings—a lively dialogue that Rinpoche described as “using the traditional method of question and answer to connect ordinary experience with sublime dharma in a flexible way.”

The text retains the Q&A format following Rinpoche’s teaching, inviting us to participate in the dialogue alongside the recipients of their original transmission. The most commendable feature of this collection of dharma talks, however, is its wide range of inquiry. From more conventional teachings on karma and rebirth, monastic discipline, and the guru-student relationship to cutting-edge debates about the Buddhist response to gender inequality, Thinley Norbu communicates the dharma with directness and accessibility. As he encourages his students in the introductory pages of his teachings, “one must leave awareness alone, naked, without doing anything to it, and without creating anything artificial.”

“To our earth—and the reemergence of the sacred feminine,” Wendy Garling dedicates her book Stars at Dawn: Forgotten Stories of Women in the Buddha’s Life (Shambhala Publications, August 2016, $18.95, 304 pp., paper), a perceptive exploration of the women closest to the historical Buddha. Garling’s accessible new biography of the Buddha is written for a general audience and examines the influence of the feminine on the Buddha’s life, in the spirit of Rita Gross’s pioneering feminist scholarship on Buddhist history.

Garling’s account progresses chronologically, starting with the Buddha’s familial relationships in his life as Prince Siddhartha. Early chapters focus on his mother, Queen Maya; his aunt Maha-prajapati (who later became his stepmother); and his principal wife, Yasodhara. The biography expands to include goddesses and female spirits who arrive at pivotal moments in the Buddha’s life and spiritual development, as well as the communities of nuns and laywomen drawn into his ministry. Throughout, Garling directs sensitive, almost reverent attention to the figures in the Pali canon who are traditionally relegated to the periphery of the Buddha’s story.

“Stories are tools for empowerment,” writes the author, a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner, and her reconstructed stories can empower female practitioners today, allowing them to create a historical link between their journeys and those of the women who came before. Stars at Dawn is bound to be a well-thumbed volume in any Buddhist library, resting on the shelf beside the hymns of nuns in the Therigatha and the stories of awakened women found in The Hidden Lamp.

In What Is Buddhist Enlightenment? (Oxford University Press, October 2016, $29.95, 264 pp.), Dale S. Wright, a professor of Asian religions at Occidental College, takes up the ambitious task of answering his title’s question, seeking to put into words an interpretation of Buddhism’s ultimate goal that recovers its most essential features.

In order to extricate that goal from centuries of Western discourse that have assigned staunch intellectual meaning to the word “enlightenment,” Wright has taken a more creative approach to his subject. Dividing the text into three distinct sections—contemporary images of enlightenment, enlightenment’s ethical characteristics, and the role of language in experiencing awakening—Wright selects living Buddhist settings as his primary source and identifies how
they bring new meanings to traditional ideas in the Pali canon. These settings include a Los Angeles Times opinion piece by Thich Nhat Hanh in response to the police brutality endured by Rodney King; a statement about the secular Buddhism espoused by atheist scholar Stephen Batchelor; and a study of the much-publicized moral failings of the Japanese Zen master Taizan Maezumi Roshi. The text is all the better for these lively contemporary applications.

Although Wright does not state this explicitly, his study tends toward a sectarian examination, focusing perhaps too narrowly on the Zen interpretations of Buddhism’s ultimate goal at the cost of including other traditions of Buddhist thought; and it is hindered at times by the discursive verbosity of scholarship (one that Zen masters and forest meditators alike might view with disdain). Still, What Is Buddhist Enlightenment? offers a relevant and informative supplement to the Western practitioner’s journey of development.

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A None’s Story: Searching for Meaning Inside Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Islam documents the quest of one woman who, like many Americans, is part of the rising phenomenon of the “nones”—people who lack a religious affiliation but who may believe in God or attend places of worship. From church to synagogue, zendo to mosque, author Corinna Nicolaou chronicles her eager and inquisitive journey to learn more about the religions that make up today’s pluralistic American society. The excerpt below recounts her dharma interview with the roshi of a Zen temple in Berkeley, California during in a meditation retreat—a rite of passage for many students in the Zen tradition. 

The Zen master isn’t in the room with us. He’s in a small room that shares a wall with this one, accepting his consultations. When the last person comes back, the next goes. In the meantime, the rest of us continue our meditations. At some point, I begin to notice a crashing noise that sounds like a two-by-four being dropped. At first I think construction is going on nearby. But, no, it’s perfectly silent in the space between crashes. No hammering. No buzzing saw. Just “thwack!” out of nowhere. It dawns on me that the crashing might be coming from the little room where the meetings are taking place. If this is the case, I hope it is a technique reserved for the most advanced students. As people reappear, I surreptitiously study them for signs of trauma.

My turn arrives. I bow to my cushion upon standing and again to the altar as I leave the room. I enter the dark hall and then open the door where the interviews are being held. The Zen master is sitting cross-legged on his cushion. I scan the area for a two-by-four but see nothing. I walk in and perform the “sandwich bow” that the abbot showed me earlier. It is made up of two bows at the waist with a single prostration of forehead to floor in between. Although it is optional, I was told it is the traditional way of greeting a master. I am hoping my performance of it lessens the severity of my beating should one be in store.

The Zen master invites me to sit opposite him. “Do you have a question?” he asks.

I nod. “I’ve noticed that sometimes when I’m meditating . . .” I search for the right words, wondering if what I’m about to say will make any sense. “Something will happen. I’ll be really aware of my breathing and the present moment, and then suddenly I feel like I’m about to have a panic attack. Do you understand why this happens?”

He nods knowingly. “That’s your ‘little I.’”

“My ‘little I’?”

“You begin to occupy the space of the ‘big I’ and then your ‘little I’ gets scared. Before, the ‘little I’ is who you thought you were, and now you have the understanding that you are more. She is threatened. You are making progress, and you might not need her. That feeling of anxiety or panic is her tool. You have no choice but to come back to her.”

I’m amazed at how effortlessly he presents his answer, as if this issue was brought to him regularly. Then I remember a small detail I read about the Buddha. In recalling the years leading up to his enlightenment, when he was meditating in the forest by himself, he said fear and terror became his “constant companions.” They could be aroused by the smallest things like “a peacock dropping a twig and the wind blowing the fallen leaves.” That must have been Buddha’s “little I” rebelling against his increasing awareness.

So maybe these sensations aren’t a sign of my going backward, as I had believed. I recall the moments of panic, not just on this trip but at other times in my life, too. Perhaps they were all fueled by the dawning realization: I might be more than this individual identity. Maybe I was starting to sense that vast space outside the thought highway.

“So how do I get rid of her?” I ask my Zen master.

“Who?”

“My ‘little I’? How do I kill her off for good?”

A look of concern washes over his face. “You don’t.”

“I thought that was the point.”

“No. You need her.”

“I need her?”

“She takes care of you. She gets things done. Be compassionate to her.”

“But . . .”

I was about to say that I thought she was the enemy when it occurs to me what a bizarre thing that would be to admit. She’s me . . .

“Be aware of her. That’s enough.”

I’m staring at the nubs of the natural-fiber carpet between us trying to recalibrate my perspective when my Zen master asks, “What is all that exists?”

I look up. It’s a koan, a Buddhist brainteaser meant to slap me upside the head so I can see things with fresh eyes.

“Truth?” I say.

He slams his open palm against the floor, making the thwacking sound I’ve been hearing all afternoon.

“If you can name it, you’ve limited it,” he says. He’s transformed into a Buddhist drill sergeant. “This,” he hits the floor again, “is all there is. It has no words!”

He tries again. “What do you see?”

Now I’m worried. I don’t know the answer. I’m looking into his eyes. “A soul?” I say. The second it comes out, I know it’s wrong.

He looks disappointed. “You see a soul?”

“Uh . . .”

“Come on!”

“Love?” Another stupid answer. That’s a concept, a mental construct.

He bulges his eyes out at me. “What . . . do . . . you . . . see?”

“Eyeballs! I see your eyeballs!”

He smiles. “What color are they?”

“Gray.”

He looks pleased. “That is what you see.” He smacks the ground. “All there is with no thinking.”

Reprinted with permission from A None’s Story: Searching for Meaning Inside Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism & Islam by Corinna Nicolaou, Columbia University Press.

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