Organ Mountain Zen



Monday, February 21, 2011

Good Grief

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,



I have been reading a wonderfully challenging text entitled “Zen Radicals, Rebels and Reformers.” It is giving me pause, much like I had one day back in the early 90’s when I saw myself in a three piece suit in the mirror and decided then and there to take it off. What is Zen really about? And what are authentic Zen teachers?



If you see a Zen teacher behaving himself, I would be careful. If you see a Zen teacher going with the flow, e-gads, something is amiss. The fact is, true Zen Teachers are an historically against the stream bunch. You think all those seemingly flippant remarks by Zen Masters of old were just cute? Not. They were authentically irreverent, disrespectful, challenging, and decidedly not conventional. They occurred in real time in real society and were intended to wake up the sheep sleeping in front of them. For Zen, there should be no such thing as “mainstream.”



There are, however, those pesky precepts, those forms, and those ceremonies. What to do?



Precepts are a reflection of our original nature, not some code of conduct or set of commandments. So those code police among us need to get that straight. Want rules? Go to another form of Buddhism. Precepts are our authentic self, which is no-self, in action. Based in absolute compassion, they are always expressed in a relative context. Need a policy manual or a code of conduct to protect yourself from yourself or others? Go to church or join a club.



Forms are a practice vehicle, not a practice end. They get us to the place where we drop away. Ceremonies can function both as a seal of our authenticity and for Zen iconoclasts, a litmus test of our humility. An iconoclast has, good grief, I hate to admit it, an agenda. Setting that agenda aside long enough to practice a ritual or ceremony can be liberating however, so I encourage it.



The recent soap opera (see Tricycle.com) surrounding the conduct of Zen teachers of late has gotten ratings in the blogosphere and made me sick, but what does it really say? I think it says that we have been seduced by mainstream thinking, become orthodoxers, are caught in the same stink as megachurches, and left the actual practice of Zen to those on the margins.



While I do not support scandalous behavior, I do think it is important not to paint with a broad brush. Everything occurs in a context and everything is relative. That teachers sometimes behave poorly is a given in a human world. There is no excuse for abuse.



A few suggestions: Do not put teachers on some pedestal. Practice to see them as human beings. If you address misbehavior when it happens and keep your own authentic council, you will have no problem. If you seek after intimacy with a person in power or desire status by association, you will have a problem. Assuming you are a competent adult you may feel as though you have been victimized, but your choices were your own. So, in my view the responsibility is on the teacher, the teacher’s teacher, the student, the student’s friends, as well as the Sangha at large.



To not teach with the sharp sword of Manjushri is the real failing of modern Zen teachers.



Be well.

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