Café Philos: an internet café

"In a certain sense, Zen is feeling life instead of feeling something about life."

- Alan Watts

"Nobody today is normal, everybody is a little bit crazy or unbalanced, people's minds are running all the time. Their perceptions of the world are partial, incomplete. They are eaten alive by their egos. They think they see, but they are mistaken; all they do is project their madness, their world, upon the world. There is no clarity, no wisdom in that!"

- Taisen Deshimaru



This might be the first time I've seen a Zen Buddhist so lament "people today". I confess I largely agree with him! I think he might describe most of us to one extent or another. Yet, I don't recall ever having read in any accurate history of an age when his lament would not be true of most people. Those who are not "a little bit crazy or unbalanced" have always been as rare as monks -- maybe even as rare as Buddhas. The notion there was a Golden Age in which people in general were fundamentally much better and wiser than they are today is a myth, rather than an historical reality.

Yet, does that mean we should forgo trying to be as wise and sane as possible? Of course not! The fact there are some very wise and sane people in this world means it is possible to be very wise and sane. Maybe the vast majority of humanity will always be -- as humanity has always been -- "eaten alive by their egos." Yet, that does not mean all of us need be.

Had the Buddha been a god, like Christ, people would say, "Enlightenment is only possible for gods", and "Only the Buddha was fully authentic". They say those things about Christ, you know. "Only Christ was perfect." And, "Only Christ could love everyone". To make your mentor a god is a form of escapism. It's a way of denying your potential.

"[A]ll they do is project their madness, their world, upon the world." Your enlightenment will not solve all the world's problems. But perhaps it will mean that you become aware -- deeply aware -- of when you are projecting your madness, your world, upon the world. Then you can at least choose wisely whether to do it or not. As near as I know, that's one of the things enlightenment most does for you -- makes you wise and sane.

It does not make the world's problems go away. If you have no skills and are unemployable before you are enlightened, you will have no skills and be unemployable after you are enlightened, etc. But perhaps you will have a realism, a wisdom, and a sanity about your situation that you never had before. And that, of course, can help you meet your challenges quite a bit better than you have ever met them before.

Krishnamurti observed that no one seeks enlightenment until they get into trouble. It's only when we suffer, and wish to escape our suffering, that the possibility of enlightenment becomes a burning, passionate goal. Yet, as Krishnamurti once again said, when we seek enlightenment as an escape from suffering, enlightenment will not come. We will find some escape, but it will not be enlightenment.

Most of us will always want to live as the people Taisen Deshimaru laments. We will never experience a crisis so profoundly unsolvable that we are forced by it into enlightenment. For some say enlightenment comes only when every form of escape has been exhausted. Perhaps that is why so few people are enlightened and why every age has a right to repeat Taisen Deshimaru's lament.

"The insight that everybody and everything has surfaced to the enlightened state of mind simultaneously with you is definitely accompanying the very moment of realization. This is why you know that the reality is perfect. It is not perfect in its potentiality, it is perfect in its fully actualized state, standing with you hand in hand, face to face."

"This feeling is extremely pronounced in the first several weeks following the enlightenment. Talking, even thinking about it is felt to be as superfluous as asking a fellow passenger on a train: "Are you, too, traveling in this train?" It's meaningless. Since everybody else is also enlightened, what's there to talk about?"


- Alex Bunard Source

Being true to oneself is a skill. It might even be the single most important skill we can acquire. A Zen poem beautifully expresses the emotional import of being true to oneself while expressing the art of it in the simplest terms possible:

I eat when I'm hungry.
I drink when I'm thirsty.
I sleep when I'm tired.
How wonderful!

For many people, the very closest they will come to being true to themselves happens during the earliest days of their lives when they cried when they felt like crying, puked when they had to puke, slept when they were tired. Yet, those days soon ended. As they grew, they were increasingly taught to ignore themselves and their own wants and needs. To sit still when they wanted to move about. To be quiet when they wanted to yell. To learn subjects they did not want to study. To pass exams they did not want to take. To hold jobs they did not want to hold. Much of what they learned about denying themselves was necessary, of course, for them to live and function in this strange world.

Yet, it's surprising at times to reflect on how much we unnecessarily deny ourselves. And if that is surprising, then it is absolutely astonishing to ponder all the ways we unnecessarily deny ourselves.

Sometimes those ways are obvious. I'm reminded of a friend whose father was a senior executive of an auto company. Early on, the father decided his son would become the Chief Executive Officer of a large corporation -- hopefully, General Motors. From that moment forward he pressured his son to conform to the ways of an executive in training. Nothing his son wanted or did was innocent: Everything must have a purpose and that purpose must be to produce an executive. Consequently, my friend grew up deeply confused about who he was and what he wanted for himself. How could he not have grown up confused? He was never taught how to find out who he was.

Yet, many times the ways in which we learn to deny ourselves are not quite as obvious. Today, consumerism is the prime example of that. Corporations, their advertising agencies and public relations firms are constantly teaching people in consumer societies that being true to yourself means little more than buying a brand. While that is a shallow, artificial and ultimately misleading way of expressing yourself, it is the primary way in which millions -- and soon billions -- of humans will simultaneously "express themselves" and deny their true selves. Consumerism merely promotes narcissism, and substitutes it for self-realization and accomplishment. In that respect, it is just another way of denying your true self. And how can you be true to yourself if you deny your true self?

So, broadly speaking, we have so far discussed only one way in which being true to yourself is skillful. That is, there is skill involved in avoiding the many and various ways of unnecessarily denying ourselves.

Besides the many and various ways in which we deny ourselves, there are other challenges to being true to oneself. For instance: To be true to yourself, you must, of course, know yourself. That is an ongoing process without end. We never complete the task of knowing ourselves: We merely get better at it. Because we never complete the task, there is always some uncertainty about who we are.

Yet, many of us avoid knowing ourselves precisely because knowing ourselves involves uncertainty, and uncertainty is uncomfortable. Instead of maintaining the open mindedness to genuinely learn about ourselves as we go along in life, many of us try to fashion personal myths about ourselves that we can cling to in order to avoid the discomfort of uncertainty. "I am such and such a person", we tell ourselves -- even though we do not act that way, or at least haven't acted that way in years. Paradoxically, to know yourself, you must be willing to live with the uncertainty of not knowing yourself.

There are many ways to learn about oneself, but perhaps the best way is to watch what one does as dispassionately as one would watch someone else's child at play, or a stranger on the street. That requires considerable skill because it is not at all easy to dispassionately watch ourselves. Yet, that might well be the best way to learn about oneself.

Being true to oneself is not effortless. It is instead a skill that requires development. To be skillful at it, one must combine the insight to give up the many and various ways of unnecessarily denying ourselves with the will to learn about ourselves. I believe, however, that it is impossible to be genuinely happy in this life without being true to oneself. Thus, being true to oneself might indeed be the most personally valuable skill we can acquire, for it leads to genuine happiness.

"The aim of Zen is to focus attention on reality itself, instead of our intellectual and emotional reactions to reality...."

- Alan Watts


Source

"Zen draws us to it for many reasons. First because at last we have a belief which we need not believe in. No dogmas, no ritual, no mythology, no church, no priest, no holy book, - what a relief!"

- R. H. Blyth

Much of the world doesn't strongly associate religion with belief. Islam and Christianity make belief central to religiosity, so in both religions, it makes sense to ask someone about their beliefs. Yet, belief has historically played a small role in many of the rest of the world's religions.

It is fully possible to have a Shinto priest who does not believe in the gods. But it is not possible to have a Muslim Iman or a Christian priest or minister who does not believe in god. When such an iman or priest or minister exists, we say they have lost their faith. We might even accuse them of being frauds. We do not accept them as legitimate representatives of their religion. Yet, no one in Japan wonders much if a Shinto priest doesn't believe the gods exist, and no one in India accuses an agnostic yogi of being a fraud.

So, why is belief so important in Islam and Christianity?

You can look at that question very pragmatically. Bot Islam and Christianity are proselytizing religions. It is far easier to convert someone to your religion when you demand little more than belief of them, than it is when you demand a complete change in lifestyle. Hence, one reason belief might be so important to Islam and Christianity is that making belief the key to the religions helped in converting people to those religions.

Yet, that doesn't answer whether belief has any genuine religious function? Does what you believe actually have anything to do with your spirituality?

A Zen monk might say "no", but it's unlikely that a Muslim or Christian would give the same answer. Muslims and Christians typically believe in belief.

The other day, I stumbled across a Christian youth site on the net that had recently done an informal survey on the attitudes of Christian youth towards female modesty.

As the site itself pointed out, the survey is not scientific, since among other things it was self-selecting. Yet, the basic premise of the survey is nevertheless interesting enough: Should women and girls dress modestly to help their brothers in Christ avoid lusting for them?

Over 200 women and girls responded to the survey, and over 1600 boys and men. The survey asked 148 questions in such dress categories as swimsuits, undergarments, shirts/dresses, layering, and so forth. Respondents were asked whether they strongly agreed, agreed, were neutral towards, disagreed, or strongly disagreed with such statements as, "Seeing even an inch of skin between the bottom of a girl's shirt and her pants is a stumbling block", or " A girl's underwear should never show [emphasis in original]."

Now, some liberal bloggers have sharply criticized the implied premise of the survey that it is the job of women and girls to prevent boys and men from lusting after them. The bloggers have pointed out this unreasonably shifts the burden of lust from the male to the female.

I agree.

I could say much about this, but I'd like to focus on one thing alone. Post-pubic boys and young men need to learn how to deal with their natural desires, and removing anything from their environment that stimulates their desires is certainly not the best way to help them deal with those desires. Instead, it is actually the best way to help them avoid dealing with their natural desires. Consequently, they are not challenged to mature into adults that can look upon a woman without lust when lust is inappropriate.

This recalls to me the story of two Zen monks who were travelling when they came to a swollen stream. Standing in the road beside the stream, wondering how she might cross, was a beautiful young woman. Without hesitation, the older monk picked up the woman and carried her across the stream. She thanked him and went on her separate way. The two monks then travelled on together for several hours, until the younger monk, deeply troubled, could no longer remain silent. "Brother, aren't we forbidden to have any physical contact with women?", he asked. Replied the older monk, "I put her down several hours ago, but you are still carrying her."

A woman's dress, no matter how provocative, does not determine whether we lust for her. What determines whether we lust for her is we ourselves. Hence, no one but we ourselves can properly take responsibility for our desire.

Life is in the details. We ask big questions about the meaning of life, but can any answer we give to those questions make us happier than a good walk?

I have a close friend who refuses to take phone calls from people -- even her own family -- unless she genuinely feels like hearing from them.

More over, she makes no excuses for her behavior. She will tell you right up front when she does take your call that she saw your number on her caller ID the other evening, but didn't take your call then because she wasn't feeling like talking with you.

If I ever needed reasons to love her (and I don't need reasons), that would be one of the reasons I'd love her.

When I call her I know, if she takes the call, that she actually wants to speak with me. I don't know that with some people.

It's astonishing how many of us are willing to put up with calls we don't feel like taking at the moment. That is, we're willing to take the calls, but then all too often we resent the caller for having called us when we didn't want to speak with them. With my friend, I know that never happens.

I can't remember the source, but somewhere out there in this big wide world is a Zen poem that goes something like this:

I eat when I'm hungry
I sleep when I'm tired
How wonderful!

My friend reminds me of that poem. Not just in the intelligent way she takes phone calls, but in the intelligent way she leads her life. That is, her policy on phone calls is part and parcel of her policy on nearly everything in her life. As much as can be done in this often insane world, she "eats when she's hungry, sleeps when she's tired". She has worked very hard, and made some sacrifices, to make her life one that can be lived as close to spontaneously as possible.

Thus spring begins: old
stupidities repeated,
new errs invented

- Issa


I wonder how old Issa was when he wrote those lines? Generally, one must be old to say such things without bitterness or cynicism. Was Issa without bitterness or cynicism when he wrote those lines?

I wonder.

Sometimes with age comes acceptance of the world as it is. But bitterness and cynicism are not acceptance. Instead, they are rejections of the world as it is. So, which do you think is better? Acceptance or bitterness and cynicism? Which is wiser? Which sees more clearly? Which is more life affirming? And which is more conducive to happiness?


My thanks to Whisky River for the quote.

My very beautiful friend, Becky, has sent me these lyrics to the song, Like A Wave (Surfing Zen):

Nothing that was will be again
The way it once was
Everything passes, everything will always pass
Life comes in waves like the sea
In a timeless to-and-fro

Everthing that we see is not
The same as what we saw a second ago
Everything moves every moment in the world
Pointless to escape or lie
To ourselves
Right now, there is so much life out there
In here, forever
Like a wave on the sea.



Lyrics by Lulu Santos and Nelson Motta for music written by Caetano Veloso.


There is a poem about Becky here.

Dear Anne,

Over at the By Virtue Of Release Blog, Mark McDermott has written a brief but beautiful post on dealing with negative thoughts and feelings about people. To quote part of it:

I remembered the other day that part of Zen practice is "taking the step back." Being very human I have negative, unskilful reactions to things that other people do and say. The unskillful way to have such a reaction is to go with it and be caught up in it like a net that drags me along to further negative consequences - anger, jealousy, irritation - you know.

The skillful way is to take a step back and see the reaction for just what it is - my emotions living their life with no regard for my wholeness. Part of the stepping back is to make no judgement of the reaction, not judging it as negative or positive; and not judging me for having it in the first place.

His full post is the best advice on dealing with negative thoughts and feelings about people that I've yet to see on the internet. Best of all, it's short. Go take a gander, think about it, and let me know if I'm right or if I need to swear off the beer before reading other people's blogs.

Paul