S'all I gotta say. Matisyahu makes me wanna shukl my toches. That will be happening on the 30th, when I take my girl an my kid to see this craziness live.

Boiiiiiiiiii!

So, where was I? Right. Tying the ramble below to Brad Warner n' stuff.

As I said, I believe that numerous dharma voices are not only important, but necessary to the survival and growth of Zen and Buddhism here in the West. Now many would say "You know, I think they're doing fine, thanks. Both have been growing rather steadily the past half a century with little to no help..."

Wrong.

There's been plenty of help. Plenty. A sangha friend of mine sent a message to our sangha listserve (interestingly enough about Brad Warner) that hit the head of the nail; "...the greatest spiritual teachers of all time were by and large 'counter-cultural' for their time and place. It's just that the counter culture often ends up becoming the 'norm'!" Couldn't agree more. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that Warner's one of the "greatest spiritual teachers of all time" (sorry, Brad). But I believe my friend was right when she said that the greats (whomever they are--J.C, Siddhartha, Zoroaster, Muhammad, Gandhi, MLK, PeeWee Herman, pick one) were all outside the mainstream. They were shit-stirrers, frankly. They incited revolution wherever they went. Not necessarily revolt in the sense of physical violence, but true revolution. It's very easy to get people riled up emotionally and have it explode into uncontrollable boil-over, but true revolution is a change in perception of the here-and-now, a change in the way your mind, body and spirit connect and experience the very moment of now. "Hearts and minds", as the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs like to say.

That ain't so simple.

Anytime something is done for so long that its genesis isn't remembered by living folks, the process is in danger of becoming mystified, mythologized and fictionalized. Be it the birth of Jesus the Nazarene or the development of pinochle, this is dangerous. It often leads to deification of movement leaders while at the same time, a stagnation of the movement itself as focus shifts from the ideas of that movement towards the worship of the leader[s]. There is a less-than-zero chance that this could happen to Zen in the West. It most certainly HAS happened to Buddhism in general.

So, where does this all tie into Brad, me and the cost of tofu in Portland?

For me, the sign of a good teacher (roshi, sensei, guru, kindergarten mistress, etc) is the ability to make you look past your preconception or astigmatism and see something in a new way. That's what Zen is all about; seeing the truth of something and not merely your egos' desire. A good sensei does that like a stick to the back of the head and at times jolts you out of one mode of perception and into another. Often-times, that shift in perception is all that it takes to make a difference. The teacher often pushes you out of your comfort-zone, making you feel like you're standing intellectually naked out on the corner of Main St. This is where the real work happens. This is where you actually make progress. Looking at things in the same old comfortable way never generates growth. All that does is help you feel more comfortable in your jammy-pants and beat-to-hell bathrobe, Dude, and there you stay. But a good teacher will rip it all off of you and say "Deal with it." A good teacher will say "Yeah, I know that the conventional wisdom says this. I know that they've been saying that for two-thousand-plus years. Whatever. Let's look at it this way for a while. Why? Because there are all sorts of people on this globe, and if we're gonna talk of the universality of our prime tenant and all that, we'd damn-well better be willing to look at it any way that the dice tell us to, or else we're just as full of shit as anybody else."

I completely agree that the great teachers of nearly every age all went about things that way. It's the only way to grow. It's the only way to STAY growing. If you don't pick the grapes off, the vine will eventually die. That's why Buddhism has continued its steady growth in the West. Because once or twice in a generation, somebody comes along and flips everybody on their shells.

The wrap-up, when this very special episode of SotW continues, right after this brief message...

So I wake this morning to find not one, or two or even three, but five emails from friends around the world asking me if I'd read Brad Warner's latest SG column, "sa+0ri pr0n". Well, up until this morning I hadn't, no. It's not like I stalk the guy. That's the trouble with affiliations. Everybody (SG peeps mostly) seems to think I am fully up-to-date with his every word. Honestly, even in this day and age with direct 'tube access, I don't follow many people all that closely (unless you're on the Huffington Post). We (Brad and I) corespond via email occasionally, and have been trying to plan a few things together with less-than-grand success. That's my relationship with Brad-san.

But I do read his writing. And I generally respect it, and him. Do I agree with it all? Nope. Do I have certain major issues with some of his positions? Yup. Can he be a pin-head? You bet. Do I think he's an important voice in Western Buddhism and Zen?

Absolutely.

That last one is important. I am a believer in the idea that Zen cannot ever "get old". That's like saying "You think 1 plus 1 plus 1 is three? That's sooooo 'old math' of you..." However, having said that, I DO believe that the language used to bring "three" to the world needs to be kept idiomatically, intellectually and culturally contemporary. Anyone who's studied philosophy for a little while knows first-hand how hard it is to gain a true understanding and grasp of a philosophical concept developed in another language. German is notoriously hard to deal with in this regard, and inevitably suffers a dumbing down when being "translated" (read: butchered) into English. Japanese and Chinese are right up there. The old linguist joke is very true for Sino-Japanese languages (as they share phonemes and and characters [kango]); "Etymology is only an 'n' away from 'bugs'!1"

But I (wildly) digress. What does this all have to do with Brad's latest? Well, two things, mainly. First, I believe that people like Brad are very important to zen, and not only to "zen" but to "Zen". There's been talk and argument for decades about "American" Zen--good, bad and indifferent. Are we destroying Zen by "Westernizing" it? Is Zen anachronistic when practiced in LA or NOLA? Is all that sitting really necessary? Is it a waste for people in the here-and-now to be stitching up roksus and wagesas? And--moreover--are they doing so just to give themselves some warm and fuzzy feeling of being so very "zen"? Voices like Brad-san are important to the establishment of real, true and relevant Zen here in the West. When Suzuki-roshi came to America in the middle of the past century, he knew the importance of doing things in a way that would connect Zen to America (so much so that he outright alienated near the entirety of the then-current Japanese-American sangha of the SFZC while doing so). But Suzuki-roshi understood that he was in America, and it would no more do to try and make local residents understand Japanese than he suddenly understand everything American. All understanding comes with time and practice, intellectually, religiously and culturally, and they can inform each-other, but they could never substitute for each-other, at least not at first. And while Suzuki-roshi knew that the understanding and experience he was trying to convey was universal, the manner in which that conveyance happened was dependent upon him. So he chose to do so in as contemporary a way as possible. For his students that grasped Buddhism effectively, and wanted to experience more of the specific nuances of Japanese Zen, he would readily say, essentially; "Then off to Japan you go". There is no Zen babble-fish, Arthur-san.2 In my opinion, Brad serves close to the same purpose, albeit more as a generational and inter-cultural translator.

And secondly, I believe that in order for Buddhism and Zen to really, truly sink roots deep into this ground--in America--it must be as accessible to as many people as possible right here, right now (get on the decks and cue Fatboy on the "1"3). We have a generation right now that is absolutely lost. We have kids who are more apathetic than I believe at any time in America's history. At the same time, they are more self-actualized and self-realizing than ever before. They want something. They don't have a handle on it, but they're longing for connection. People 40 and younger- Generations X, Y & Z--are hot for something to help them as the arthritis and erectile dysfunction sets in. Religion has failed them and split the nation in two. They want answers.

But a not-insignificant portion of those people are not getting it from Tricycle and Shambala Sun. They see contemporary Dharma-rags as nothing more than slick, corporately shaped hippie hold-overs. We are trying to talk to the 'zine generation from the glossy gate-fold of corporate America, and they're not buying it. People like Brad Warner and Noah Levine understand that you must talk in the language that the audience immediately responds to before you start hitting them with sanskrit and wago. Essentially, you must be willing to say shit, piss and fuck when you mean shit, piss and fuck.

I'll connect this all back to me and Brad-san in the next chapter. I have lawn to go fucking mow in the fucking rain...

1. although that's not strictly true. Bugs require a [-y +o] as well...
2. Cheers, Douglass. A "poof of logic", indeed...
3. Again, another contemporary(ish) reference. See how that works, pops?
   

So, let's talk about feet (or pick a body-part, I suppose) of clay.

Very briefly: every single person who's ever taught, every person that's ever written down a thought, wrote an exposition, poem, article or ditty, every person who's ever stood in front of someone or some few thousands and spoke the most inspiring and stirring word, trod down street (high or low) or ambled through a glade, climbed Everest or rode a bike through Death Valley, every astronaut, president, Pope or Lama. Everyone. Every last blessed one of them.

Was
full
of
shit.

Flawed to the core.

Weak. Petulant. Insolent. Gullible. Not really worth their own afterbirth, frankly.

Yes. Siddhartha Gautama included.

Don't really have any better handle on things than you do.

'Fraid so.

That, however, is what makes this whole thing--this whole existence--worth it. We are just nothing more than, well... "nothing more than" has two extra words than it needs. "We" are these irritating egos getting in the way of direct experience. And so often our experience latches itself on another mere ego-projection that we somehow allow ourselves to believe has better, or more, answers to questions that we want answers to so desperately. We want so badly to believe that someone else has a better handle on all this than we do. So we look to writers, speakers, "experts", gurus, et al, as a method of allowing us to feel that "the answers will always be out there". We even went so far as to project that ego into the sky, or out in space on some other plane, named it "god" and said "There! Now we feel better!"

But back down to earth. While one could argue that the whole "god invention" is--in fact--the greatest and most dangerous example of misplaced trust, for me, right behind it has to be the horrible misconception that people of cultural or religious note, particularly religious authors, must have some kind of samsaric immunity, and are somehow much closer to "it" than we are. They wrote a book on it! you think to yourself.

Folks, they ain't all that. His Holiness, The Dalai Lama included. Yes, he's closer to enlightenment than you or I, no question. But it's a matter of scale.

Let's say that "0" is the start-point for measuring. "Enlightenment/Nirvana" is 10 million.

He's at 9,999,998, and you're buts-to-nuts with His Holiness.

That's just how close we ALL are to being free.


What a miracle that is...

What if monogamy is simply an artificial construct agreed upon by two people--or a culture or society--whose sole purpose is to satisfy the Ego's desire to "feel special"?

Aren't I special no matter whom I promise to sleep with? Is my special nature defined by who wants to spend time in my life? Am I no longer "special" now that I'm not married?

Any sailor can tell you that a perfectly sound hull still leaks. Unfortunately, there's no bilge pump for broken hearts. My teacher said the closest thing to pitch and pail is chanting.

Om ka ka kabe san ma e sowa ka...

Depression, were I not to have suffered from it my entire life, would surely fascinate me to no end as a course of study. But ask any cook: tasting the same thing over and over and over tends to dull the palate. Ask a bar-band if they still like playing "Stairway to Freebird". And so on.

As a student of Zen, I have the ability to approach things differently now than I did--say--twenty years ago when I didn't have a name for my depression, and it fit me better (all "gothy" 'n stuff back then, yaknow). This difference in approach has, more than anything, lead me to understand something about myself:

I ain't all that.

Now, that in-and-of itself sounds a bit depressing. Everyone likes to think they're at least a little special. But it's my opinion that we tend to take that a bit too far here in the west. We tell our children just how special they are. We tell young people that success is best achieved by striving to set themselves apart; to be an individual, to be unique. We see individuality as the pinacle of expression.

No one ever says "Learn to see just how like everybody else you are!" "Lots and lots of people have experiences just like you." "I've felt like this over someone before." None of those sentences get used with much success when it comes to making someone feel better about "themselves". Yet, what help is it to stoke a person's ego when their ego is the problem?

Lately, I've been feeling slighted. Un-valued. Hurt in ways that I haven't felt in a long time. One of the things that I used to use to help my depression was the value I had in a relationship. That relationship is now gone, and because of that, I'm trying to get my solo sea-legs again. It was easier when I was younger. I had more energy--physical and emotional--and more desire to keep going. It's very tricky, this depression thing. On one hand, I know perfectly well that I'm not all that damn special in the grand scheeme of things. On the other, I know firmly and deeply that the entire Universe revolves around me. Somewhere in between lies the middle, but it's so hard to know where to look. It's like asking the ocean to tell you where it begins and ends. I mean, what part of the ocean isn't the ocean? You either are the ocean, or you're not. You're either Enlightened or your not. You're either depressed or your not.

I'm either right about all this, or I'm not.

What a silly, deluded notion.

Off to sanzen. Maybe I'll ask about it there...

Some of you will no doubt have noticed that I'm going by a different name in a number of places on-line and in social networking sites. There are a couple of reasons for this, but 89% of it is that I'm dealing with a cyber-stalking. It is my "real" name, though. I've used my middle name as my last quite often in life, but really not since 1994. Anyways, just wanted to give you guys a head's up.

Off to enjoy the beautiful day before it all goes to rainy "meh" this weekend.