Brad Warner's Blog, page 5

Dogen's Genjo Koan: Three Commentaries

The fine folks at Counterpoint Press sent me a copy of Dogen's Genjo Koan: Three Commentaries for my review. So here goes.

First off, the by-line on this thing is a doozy. Here's what it says under the title:

EIHEI DOGEN ZENJI
Translations and
Commentaries by
Nishiari Bokusan,
Shohaku Okamura,
Shunryu Suzuki,
Kosho Uchiyama,
Sojun Mel Weitsman.
Kazuaki Tanahashi, and
Dairyu Michael Wenger

Phew!

You always know the extent to which a movie is going to be a piece of garbage by the number of names in the writing credits. One writer can make a good movie with a specific point of view and something interesting to say. When movies are written by committee the committee always succeeds in removing anything worthwhile about the story and replacing it with whatever they've agreed on will appeal to, as well as avoid offending, the greatest number of people.

This book is the product of a large Zen institution. I almost wrote that it was the product of the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC). But the inclusion of material by Kosho Uchiyama and Shohaku Okamura widens things even further. Uchiyama and Okamura stem from the same root lineage as the folks at SFZC, but do not belong to that institution itself. Because of its association with a big institution I was a little worried whether I'd be able to give this book a good review.

My problem with a lot of the stuff that comes out of SFZC these days is that it tends to be watered down. This was the trouble with their edition of Dogen's Shobogenzo (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen's Shobo Genzo). It's not that it's a bad translation. In fact it's one of the best around. But it's also a translation by committee. That committee sat together and worried about a lot of fairly ridiculous "problems" with the text such as whether or not the phrase usually rendered as "kingly bodhi tree" might be considered sexist. Which is the sort of thing you'd expect a bunch of uptight middle class liberals from San Francisco to wring their hands about. Thus in a number of areas of the text, rather than giving you what Dogen actually said, they give you what a bunch of uptight middle class liberals from San Francisco are comfortable with him saying. Fortunately they generally restrict themselves to fairly innocuous changes like making "kingly bodhi tree" into "royal bodhi tree," which I admit is pretty much the same thing. But still, the flavor of their translation is Rice-a-Roni (the San Francisco treat) rather than the kind of plain boiled rice Dogen would have served you.

Anyway, that's not what's going on with Dogen's Genjo Koan: Three Commentaries. So just forget I said any of that stuff. The reason there are so many authors in this book is because it is a compilation of three commentaries, each of which has two or three authors or editors attached. The first is by Nishiari Bokusan, who was the teacher of Shunryu Suzuki's teacher Kishizawa Ian. This is translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Mel Weitsman. Tanahashi is Japanese and speaks English but is not an ordained Zen teacher. Weitsman is American and does not speak Japanese but is an ordained Zen teacher. So one can guess that Tanahashi is responsible for the actual translation into English while Weitsman made it sound more Zen and that the two of them hashed out the translation to make sure the final piece was true to the original. Though I can't help wondering if they also removed any offending sexism or suchlike in the process.

The second commentary is attributed to Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind and the first abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center. But Suzuki himself never prepared any commentary on Genjo Koan as such, at least not for publication. He did, however, give a number of lectures on Genjo Koan over a period of six years. So Michael Wenger and Mel Weitsman went through those lectures with the assistance of Jeffrey Schneider and stitched together a Frankenstein monster commentary that reads as if it were a single piece. They did a good job. It's very hard to spot where the sutures and the bolts in the neck are in this version. But, again, I can't help wondering what Suzuki himself would have made of it. I've heard that while he was happy with Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, which was put together in a similar fashion, he thought it was more what his students heard him say than what he actually said. I'd guess he'd feel the same way about this piece.

The final commentary is the purest. It was prepared as a single piece by Kosho Uchiyama and then translated by Shohaku Okamura. Okamura was not only a direct student of Uchiyama but is a Japanese Zen monk whose English is at such a high level that he didn't need help in preparing a readable translation. I suppose he had an editor, just like any English speaking author would. But this is still Okamura's own vision of the piece. So even though Uchiyama himself didn't approve it, we can be pretty sure this is very close to how he would have said things if he'd been able to speak English.

That being said, I find Suzuki's portion to be the most readable and easy to understand, while Bokusan's runs a close second. Unfortunately Uchiyama's commentary comes off a little too stilted and scholarly for my taste. This doesn't seem to be Okamura's fault since Okamura's sketch of Uchiyama's life, which precedes the commentary, is highly readable and very warm.

Although Uchiyama's commentary is the most scholarly-sounding of the three, none of these are really scholarly commentaries. A scholarly commentary on Genjo Koan would tell you about Dogen's life, about what was going on in Japan at the time, about Dogen's use of language, about the background of the various quotations he uses, and so on. In this book you get just enough of that stuff to follow along. These are commentaries by Zen practitioners whose main intent was to help other Zen practitioners deal with their practice.

In that, I feel these are very useful for those of us who practice Zen in the West today. Granted all three commentaries are by older Japanese men. But none of these commentaries are so ancient that they feel removed and distant from us the way a really old commentary might. The earliest of the three is Nishiari's, which dates from the early twentieth century. The most recent is Uchiyama's, which dates from the 1970s. They are all, therefore, modern looks at the 800 year old Genjo Koan. Contemporary life even intrudes into the commentaries themselves when Shunryu Suzuki refers to the traffic noises outside the hall in Northern California where he delivered his talks and relates this directly to what Dogen was writing about hundreds of years before cars were invented.

Some might feel this makes the commentaries less valuable since they are so far removed from Dogen's time. One could complain that people so distant from the author's own era can't possibly know what he was talking about. But I don't feel that's the case. It's more important that all three of the commentaries are by practitioners. What's more, like us, these practitioners have to deal with the kinds of things Dogen never had to deal with.

It's funny to me when people act like we, today in the West, have so much more trouble practicing Zen than the folks in Asia hundreds of years ago. In spite of traffic noises and blaring boomboxes, we really have it a lot easier than people in Dogen's time did. They had to deal with wars and famines and political uprisings the likes of which are seldom encountered by any of us these days. The distractions we have to deal with are, admittedly, a lot more attractive and easily available than those of Dogen's time. But our excuse for not practicing is because there are so many more websites to look at and besides there's a guy upstairs practicing Jimi Hendrix licks, rather than because we're about to starve to death since the rice crop failed and the Mongols are burning down the village. It's really no contest. We've got it very cushy by comparison.

The commentaries in this book are by people who understand the unique nature of the distractions to practice contemporary people face. Though they may not be as hip and pop culture savvy as the trash I put out, they're very useful to anyone serious about pursuing Zen practice in our time.


****

Don't forget, if you want to practice some Zen, beginning Sunday January 15th 2012 I will be hosting Zazen every Sunday night at 7 pm at the Akron Shambhala Meditation Center. Maybe I'll even give you my take on Genjo Koan. The address is:

133 Portage Trail Ste. 202
Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
44221

"Moe and Curly" or "Get Started Today"

Here's a question someone sent twice. So he must really want to know.

If you have a moment can you please clarify something on your blog:

"I mean that when Moe hits Curly on the head with a sledgehammer, Moe is really only hitting Moe on the head with a sledgehammer. It only appears to be Curly getting hit."

What does this mean? Moe smashes Curly's head. Curly dies. Moe lives on.

Now I understand that nothing is truly autonomous; but... How is Moe killing Curly, actually Moe killing Moe?

For one thing, you must not be a Three Stooges fan. Curly doesn't die when he gets smashed on the head with a sledgehammer by Moe. The sledgehammer gets all bent up and Curly just says, "Ow!" Look what happened to the axe on the photo on top of this article. Curly was fine.

But I understand the question and I'll try my best to answer it.

The answer is that although it appears to us that Moe and Curly are eternally separate entities, that's not really how it is. Both Moe and Curly are manifestations of the same underlying reality. And not just in an abstract or metaphorical sense. That's really how it is.

The same something that looks out through Moe's eyes and perceives Curly, also looks out through Curly's eyes and perceives Moe. And it looks out through your eyes to perceive both Curly and Moe. If Moe were to kill Curly, that same something would outlive both of them and also be both of them. There isn't anyone else here at all.

I would expect the follow-up question to be, "How do you know this? It sure doesn't seem that way to me!"

This is a perfectly reasonable question. Because it doesn't seem that way to me either a lot of the time. But once you manage to catch on to the reality of this situation even for a moment, you can never let it go.

This understanding of things is radically different from the way most people look at stuff. It is so extraordinarily different that certain delusional folks, when they come across someone who has had a glimpse of this, get way too excited about that person and start calling her a sage or a saint. Those people will never give the folks they follow a moment's peace. Or, conversely, they get way over excited about that person and call him a heretic or a lunatic. They either venerate the person all out of proportion or they lock him up or even kill him.

More people are aware of this view than are willing to talk about it. These folks don't like either of those options. So they stay quiet or they just tell a few close friends and swear those friends to secrecy.

Then, of course, there are those who mimic people who've understood this stuff because they want the fame and money that sometimes accrues when people venerate those guys. Unfortunately you can also get yourself killed this way if you're not careful.

The reason I bring this up is that I'm always careful about announcing how I know this to be true. Much as I'd like to move out of this fleabag one-bedroom in Akron, I'm aware of the dangers involved as well. So every time I mention how I happen to know this, I always go out of my way to make it clear that I am as big of a dunce as anyone could possibly be.

The thing is, you yourself could see this too if you were willing to put in the work involved. Anyone -- absolutely anyone -- can see it if they want to. But most people are too lazy and they never will.

I have managed on a few occasions to get just clear enough in my mind and body to see that my mind is not my mind nor is my body my body. They are both manifestations of something that's way, way bigger than me. And yet this something is more me than I could ever be.

And still I have to pay my own insurance bills. What's up with that?

Anyway, this is pretty much the same explanation as you can find in any one of a dozen or more decent books on the subject. If you're really interested in understanding it clearly then you have to put in the work yourself.

Ten years of daily zazen practice usually suffices for most people to at least get an initial understanding of why Moe and Curly aren't really different from each other in the sense that we usually think.

You can get started today.


****

And if you want to get started with me, beginning Sunday January 15th 2012 I will be hosting Zazen every Sunday night at 7 pm at the Akron Shambhala Meditation Center. The address is:

133 Portage Trail Ste. 202
Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
44221

Can You Be My Teacher?

I feel like it might be time once again to address one the most frequent questions that comes to me:

Can you be my teacher?

I have addressed this before. I'm not even sure how many times. Maybe I should make it an annual thing. Or, given how often I'm asked, maybe I should just make one definitive post and put it up every three months.

The short answer is this:

No.

But if I left it at that I'd just sound mean. I don't intend this in a mean way at all. It's more like you're asking me if I can make monkeys fly out of my butt. The answer to that is, unfortunately, also no. Like making monkeys fly out of my butt, my becoming your teacher is something I cannot possibly do even if I wanted to.

If you live in Northeast Ohio, or if you want to brave the snow and ice and come here, I will be starting a regular zazen class on Sunday evenings at 7pm at the Akron Shambhala Meditation Center at 133 Portage Trail in Cuyahoga Falls. This will begin on January 15th. If you show up, we can sit together and maybe talk a little bit. I'm also working on setting up a religious nonprofit in Los Angeles. The group I started there still meets every Saturday morning at 10 AM at 237 Hill Street in Santa Monica. You can find out about them by going to dogensanghalosangeles.org. Chances are good I will be attending the regular sittings there starting in the Spring. If I can get it together, that is. Meanwhile they still go on without me each and every week without fail.

But most of the people who ask me about my becoming their teacher live in places far from me. So I really have no idea what they imagine would happen if I said "yes." Perhaps they imagine I have a center somewhere that they can run off to and escape their dreary humdrum lives into a world of beautiful Zen.

I understand that dream very well because I had that dream myself for a long time. I used to imagine that there were places out there somewhere -- if I could only find them -- where I could run away from all my troubles and just immerse myself in the wondrous dharma. But there are no such places anywhere.

Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery is about the closest thing I've ever seen to what I used to dream about. It's beautiful, it's isolated, it's dedicated to Zen practice, it's not a brainwashing cult. Tassajara is nice. But it's also not a place you can run away to in order to escape your real life. Real life will hunt you down and find you even there. Some people try to escape their real lives by going way, way far away like to India or Japan. But real life always catches them. It caught me even in the mountainous wilds of Toyama Prefecture, Japan.

What I wanted when I dreamed of those places was really just to return to childhood. I wanted to have a new mommy and daddy who would look after me and deal with all the serious shit while I got to play. But, see, even my actual childhood wasn't like that. My actual childhood was pretty miserable in a lot of ways. I was bullied and hassled and bored. So even saying that I dreamed of returning to childhood isn't right. I dreamed of going to a dreamland that never existed because it couldn't possibly exist.

I imagine some people out there who ask me about me becoming their teacher are offering themselves as submissives. They want to submit to me so I can be their master and they my slave. If you want that you can go to Genpo Roshi or Andrew Cohen. They take on submissives, I hear. Me, I wouldn't get into a van with either of those guys. I don't want any submissives. Not as Zen students anyhow.

Maybe the folks who ask about me becoming their teacher imagine we can create some kind of on-line teaching relationship. There are Zen teachers these days who take students on-line. To me that sounds like pure nonsense. But rather than speak in generalities about the concept of Zen teaching on-line, I'll just tell you why I, Brad, do not do it.

I don't do on-line Zen teaching because I really don't like the on-line experience that much. I'm not that into sitting in front of computers typing things. And yet I've fallen into a line of work in which I am constantly sitting in front of a damned computer. It's rare that I spend any less than four to six hours a day in front of this god forsaken machine. That's pretty much the minimum requirement in terms of keeping up with my own books and other writing projects. Then I also have to answer emails from people I know personally, answer emails from people I don't know from Adam who write to me, keep up the correspondence necessary to get speaking gigs and things and find cute animal videos on YouTube.

If I were to try to develop any on-line teaching relationships that would add at least another six hours a day of staring at a computer screen on top of what I do already. Plus I really have a bad memory in general. I have a hard time even recognizing people I know when I see them. People I know well are fine, but I'm constantly embarrassed when people I know just a little bit come up and start talking to me and I can't recall who they are to save my life.

When it comes to people I know only as names on the top of email messages I am totally hopeless. I'd have to work out some kind of weird organization system just to keep up with who was who and what they said to me last time and what I replied. Just getting that together would be a couple hours a day. And would I get paid for any of that? Nope. So when am I going to be able to do the things I need to do to earn a living?

It's just not gonna happen. I'm sorry. I know you've got serious issues and I know you like my books. I appreciate that you read what I write. I'd like to help. But I just can't.

Then there's all the issues I have in general with the whole notion of teachers and students. It isn't always an abusive relationship of the type that Genpo Roshi and Andrew Cohen advocate in the link I provided above. But it's so easy for it to devolve into that sort of thing. And this isn't just because evil manipulative teachers evilly manipulate their innocent students into becoming mindless slave zombies while they sit back and go "Mwah-ha-ha-ha-HAAAAA!"

In fact, there is a whole great class of people out there who desperately want to be turned into mindless slave zombies. Anyone who takes on the role of a spiritual teacher has to invest tremendous time, effort and energy in dealing with these kinds of people. Some of them will insist upon becoming mindless slave zombies no matter how hard you try to tell them not to. Here is a perfect example of how that works:



I can't tell you how many times I've felt just like Brian in this scene from Life of Brian. There are people out there who are exactly like the mob that follows him. And no matter how often you tell them not to follow you, they so desperately want to be led that they'll follow you anyway. It can be really stressful. I actually admire the honest people out there who take on the role of the teacher because I know what they have to deal with. All the people who want to be turned into mindless slave zombies think they're being very sincere and devoted. Which just makes it that much worse.

Watch that clip from Life of Brian again and pay close attention to the character played by John Cleese. He's the guy up front who says, "I should know (you're the messiah)! I've followed a few!" He takes on the guise of a follower. But he's really not. He wants to lead the movement. But he hasn't got the right sort of personality or charisma or whatever magic it takes to actually have people consider him to be the messiah. So he latches on to someone who has a following and offers to help that person maximize his potential.

This is very tempting because guys who do the sorts of things that get them followings are usually not really good at management type stuff. Plus it's a lot of work to have students. This means it's nearly impossible to take on students and have a normal paying job. So guys in Brian's position who want to try to be teachers need to find someone to help them get butts in seats and keep the donations rolling in and so on. So people like the character John Cleese portrays here can be very attractive.

But those guys will destroy everything. And they're everywhere. Almost all of them think they mean well. Some are very convincing. Oy! The stories I could tell you...

Anyway, this desire people have to be led is a really tremendous and very basic problem for humanity in general. This desire ends up causing all sorts of terrible tragedies like Naziism, Terrorism and the phenomenon of lousy boy bands and hair metal acts.

So that's why I can't be your teacher.

It's not that I don't like you or that I don't think your problems are serious. It's just that I can't do it. I'm flattered that you asked. But you're asking for something impossible, so I have to refuse.

******

Here's an interview I just did. Maybe you'll like it.

Oh! And my friend David Sango Angstead designed a new T-shirt/Hoodie/Bumper sticker etc. for me that you can get on my Red Bubble page. It's a very cool design. I need to order one for myself!

The Look

明けましたお目出度う y'all! That's "happy new year" for those who can't read Japanese.

Here's an email I got recently.


Attached is a picture of Behring Breivik, the guy who shot, bombed and killed about 77 people in Norway this summer. He has been examined by psychiatrists and they have come to the conclusion that he is/was a paranoid schizophrenic, meaning he was insane at the time of his murderous actions.

But look at his picture closely, look at his eyes...he is very balanced according to the Tibetan theory of "eye science."

I sometimes ask myself if this means that Hitler, Stalin, Osama and all other crazy wackos are also just paranoid schizos then?

So are these people really just sick or are they just simply "evil" ? This guy Behring Breivik planned and planned and worked at this for years and went to such lengths to kill these people that it is very hard for me to consider him sick, as most healthy and very intelligent people would not have managed the task of producing, orchestrating and manifesting such a killing even if they wanted to. Should that not say something about his sanity?


I think this is a really important question. And to me the question is, What is sanity and how does it relate to Enlightenment?

I think it's clear that there is no real correlation between I.Q. and morality. Some of the most immoral people in history have been extremely intelligent as measured by the accepted standards of measuring such things. Several of the people who followed Shoko Asahara's orders and placed poison gas on the Tokyo subway system were highly educated. Many of the top leaders of the Nazi party were also very brainy.

This means that the ability to carefully plan out and execute some specific operation does not relate at all with being a moral person. It is quite possible to create a very complex proceedure and to carry it out without having any sense of morality. Whatever you think really happened in Lower Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001, it was clear proof that planning and executing complex schemes does not require any sense of morality. Whoever did that stuff was very smart. I'm sure they all knew how to conduct themselves socially and be accepted as sane. If not, they wouldn't have been able to interact with the many people they needed to deal with in order to accomplish their goal. These were not raving lunatics. They never are...

But one would expect that enlightenment in the Buddhist sense would correlate with morality and just basic human decency. This is where things get tricky. Because it all depends on how one defines enlightenment.

The general consensus seems to be that an enlightened person is one who has undergone what they call an "enlightenment experience." This experience reveals to the enlightened person the true nature of reality. After having had this experience, the person is transformed into something more than what he or she was before.

But I suspect there is precious little more correlation between true morality and the ability to have one of these so-called "enlightenment experiences" than there is between true morality and the ability to score high on an I.Q. test.

OK. I'll back off a little there. At some level an "enlightenment experience" shows the person who has it the real meaning of moral action — that anything one does to another person is something one does to oneself. And I don't mean this in any kind of figurative or metaphorical sense. I mean that when Moe hits Curly on the head with a sledgehammer, Moe is really only hitting Moe on the head with a sledgehammer. It only appears to be Curly getting hit.

But that's not always what gets labeled as an "enlightenment experience." Often what passes for an "enlightenment experience" is something quite different. Sometimes it's much more like a drug-induced hallucination. People on psychedelic drugs often report feeling at one with the universe. But it's not the same kind of oneness. It's a oneness in which the experiencer owns that oneness and incorporates it into his/her sense of self, thereby making that sense of self infinitely big and infinitely exclusive.

Even if an "enlightenment experience" is genuine, the ego is very powerful and exceedingly clever. Absolutely anything, even a true experience of oneness with all things, can be transformed into something the ego can use to bolster itself.

As for the ability to achieve the stereotypical "look" that a realized master is supposed to have, this is even less correlated with morality or even with enlightenment. A decent actor can convincingly act out a variety or roles even when the actor has not experienced anything like what the character he's portraying is supposed to have experienced. It's easy to look the part of the balanced guru without being the least bit balanced.


Osama bin Laden could do it.


Shoko Asahara can do it.


Kirtanananda Swami Bhaktipada, who allegedly ordered several killings on the New Vrindaban Hare Krishna farm community could do it.


I suspect that Mike Myers can do it but refrained from doing it lest he look too much like his buddy...


...Deepak Chopra who has really got it down!

Which isn't to say Deepak is anything like Osama bin Laden, Shoko Asahara and Kirtananda. I don't think he is at all. But that beatific grin he's mastered doesn't prove it.

So sanity is something quite difficult to define. Like the famous quote about pornography, "you know it when you see it." But you don't know it just because someone looks the way the media tells you they're supposed to. It's much more subtle.

And people are uncomfortable with that. They want easy definitions that never change. Unfortunately, in real life easy definitions that never change are hard to come by. They want stereotypes that are reliable. But stereotypes are never reliable.

A Christmas Stocking Type Jumble of Unrelated Ideas

Merry Christmas everybody!

Or if you don't do Christmas Happy Kwanza, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Festivus, Rohatsu or whatever.

I'm down in Dallas where, yesterday, I attempted to visit the Occupy Dallas movement with my dad. Only when we got to where they're supposed to be at the time they're supposed to meet there was nobody around. Maybe they take Christmas Eve off. So we went and saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie instead. It was good. But we also saw J. Edgar, the Clint Eastwood movie about J. Edgar Hoover. That was better. We didn't see both movies on the same day.

I have mixed feelings about the whole "Occupy Wherever" movement. I'm glad it's there. I'm glad people are expressing an opinion about how totally fucked the current system is. On the other hand, the message seems a bit muddled. And, as it always is, the movement is pretty much dominated by a certain type of person. It's hard to define the personality type that always takes over these things. But you know them when you encounter them. They're sort of loud and cranky and convinced of their eternal rightness. I find those people incredibly annoying most of the time.

I like these protesters better. Seriously.



***

For those who are interested in understanding what Nishijima Roshi, my teacher, is on about when he talks about the Sympathetic and the Parasympathetic nervous systems here is a little animation for you that explains it all (or at least one aspect of it all). It's called Prickles and Goo. Take a look:



You'll note that this animation is by Trey Parker & Matt Stone, creators of South Park, and that the audio is from a lecture by Alan Watts. None of these people have any connection at all with Nishijima Roshi nor do the terms "symapthetic nervous system" or "parasympathetic nervous system" appear anywhere in this piece. And yet Alan Watts is saying exactly, precisely and unmistakably the very same thing as Nishijima.

To translate this into Nishijima's terms, "prickly" = "sympathetic nervous system" and "gooey" = "parasympathetic nervous system."

We choose the words we feel most comfortable with to explain the things we think are important. Nishijima Roshi was always, in Alan Watts' terms, more of a "prickly" person. So he chose a prickly way of expressing himself. He used scientific terminology. This got him some criticism from others more prickly than himself because Nishijima used prickly terminology in a gooey way. And in the world of prickles, being the least bit gooey is not allowed.

Watts, being a gooey sort, chose a gooey way of expressing the same idea. In the world of goo it's more acceptable to be slightly prickly.

Here are some more good cartoons (the opening, by the way, expresses exactly how I feel about my own work):



***

Finally, here is a really good article from Cracked.com that you may enjoy.

Have a wonderful holiday season everybody!

The Hardest Working Man in Zen Business

I'm trying to compile a list of all the gigs I've done Zen-wise. I want to include both live appearances and radio/TV shows. But I'm missing almost all the radio and TV dates. And there are a few of the live appearance gigs which I do not have records of exactly where I spoke. I know the date and the city, but not the actual venue. I've put those in bold.

Does anyone remember where these were? Is there anyone out there who knows of gigs I did that are not on this list (esp. radio and TV stuff)? Does anyone know where the heck I spoke in 2008 and 2007?


2009 TOUR (58 dates)

February 17, 2009 Psych Podcast with Deborah Harper (radio show)
February 19, 2009 The Journey Home Santa Fe Pubic Radio (radio show)

March 3, 2009 Waves of the New Age WAIF Radio Cincinnati, OH
March 5, 2009 In The Spirit with Gary Goldberg (radio show)
March 12, 2009 Bodhi Tree Bookstore Los Angeles, CA
March 18, 2009 Diesel Bookstore Avenue Oakland, CA
March 20, 2009 San Francisco Zen Center San Francisco, CA
March 21, 2009 Virato Live, Asheville, NC (radio show)
March 21, 2009 Green Apple Books San Francisco, CA
March 22, 2009 Copperfield's Books Petaluma, CA
March 25, 2009 Interdependence Project New York, NY 10012
March 26, 2009 East/West Books New York, NY
March 27, 2009 Monmouth University West Long Branch, NJ
March 28, 2009 Brooklyn Zen Center, Brooklyn, NY
March 29, 2009 Traditional Chinese Culture Institute Washington, DC

April 1, 2009 Malaprops Books, Asheville, NC
April 2-5, 2009 Southern Dharma Retreat Center, Hot Springs, NC
April 5, 2009 Asheville Zen Center, West Asheville, NC
April 6, 2009 The Regulator Bookshop, Durham, NC
April 7, 2009 Zen Center of Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
April 10-12, 2009 Nashville Zen Center, Nashville, TN
April 17, 2009 Austin Zen Center, Austin, TX
April 18, 2009 San Antonio Zen Center, San Antonio, TX
April 18, 2009 Book People, Austin, TX
April 19, 2009 Houston Zen Center, Houston, TX
April 21, 2009 Legacy Books, Plano, TX
April 27, 2009 Dawson College, Montreal, QC, Canada
April 28, 2009 Casa Del Popolo, Montréal, QC, Canada

May 2, 2009 Still Point Zen Buddhist Abbey Detroit, MI
May 3, 2009 Still Point Zen Buddhist Abbey Detroit, MI
May 5, 2009 Saskatoon Public Library, Saskatoon, SK Canada
May 6, 2009 Indigo Books, Saskatoon, SK Canada
May 7, 2009 McNally Robinson Booksellers , Saskatoon, SK Canada
May 20, 2009 Albuquerque Zen Center Albuquerque, NM
May 22, 2009 Both Sides / No Sides Zen Community, El Paso, TX
May 23, 2009 Las Cruces Zen Center, Las Cruces, NM
May 24, 2009 Las Cruces Zen Center, Las Cruces, NM

August 8-15, 2009 Great Sky Zen Sesshin Hokyoji Zen Monastery, Eitzen,
August 21-23, 2009 Frankfurt Zendo, Frankfurt, Germany
August 24, 2009 Joogastudio Samadhi, Turku, Finland
August 24, 2009 Turku Main Library Turku, Finland
August 25, 2009 Helsinki Zen Center, Helsinki, Finland
August 26, 2009 Balderin sali, Helsinki, FInland
August 26, 2009 Espoo Cine International Film Festival, Espoo, Finland
August 27, 2009 Balderin sali, Helsinki, Finland
August 28, 2009 Jyväskylä City Library, Jyväskylä, Finland
August 29, 2009 Dogen Sangha Finland, Helsinki, FInland

September 3-6, 2009 Haus Hornberg München (Munich), Germany
September 11, 2009 Durham University, Durham, UK
September 12, 2009 King's College London, UK
September 14, 2009 Oddfellows Hall, Bristol, UK
September 19 - 22, 2009 Tokei-in Temple, Shizuoka, Japan

November 13, 2009 Dharma Punx, Vancouver BC
November 17, 2009 University of Victoria Interfaith Chapel, Victoria, BC Canada
November 19, 2009 University of Victoria Interfaith Chapel, Victoria, BC Canada

December 4, 2009 Macalester College, St. Paul, MN
December 5, 2009 Macalester College, St. Paul, MN
December 6, 2009 Dharma Field, Minneapolis, MN

2010 TOUR (43 dates)

March 4, 2010 Unity Temple Kansas City, MO
March 14, 2010 Houston Zen Center, Houston, TX
March 18-21, 2010 Austin Dharma Punx Retreat, Austin, TX
March 25-28, 2010 Southern Dharma Retreat Center, Hot Springs, NC

April 2-4, 2010 Brooklyn Zen Center, Brooklyn, NY
April 10, 2010 Baltimore Zen Center, Severn, MD
April 12, 2010 Barnes & Noble VCU store, Richmond, VA 23284
April 12, 2010 Ekoji Buddhist Sangha, Richmond, Virginia 23221

May 7, 2010 Bibliothèque Francophone Multimédias Limoges, France
May 8, 2010 Salle Terres de Rencontres, Toulouse, France
May 12, 2010 (?) Katwice, Poland
May 13, 2010 Krakow, Poland
May 14, 2010 CUD Bookstore Krakow, Poland
May 20, 2010 Warsaw, Poland
May 23, 2010 Zwiazek Buddystow Zen Bodhidharma, Warsaw, Poland
May 26, 2010 Frankfurt, Zendo, Frankfurt, Germany
May 27, 2010 J.Kamphausen Verlag & Distribution GmbH, Bielefeld, Germany
May 28, 2010 Dharma Buchladen, Berlin, Germany

June 1, 2010 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, FInland
June 2, 2010 Balderin sali, Helsinki, Finland
June 3, 2010 Laughing Yoga Studio, Tempere, FInland
June 3, 2010 Tempere Library, Tempere, Finland
June 4, 2010 Dogen Sangha Finland, Helsinki, Finland
June 5, 2010 Dogen Sangha Finland Helsinki, Finland
June 13, 2010 Kapelruimte, Nijmegan, Netherlands
June 16, 2010 Bookfinders Bookshop and Café, Belfast, Northern Ireland
June 17, 2010 St John Hall, Ballymena, Northern Ireland
June 26, 2010 Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

August 7-14, 2010 - Great Sky Zen Sesshin, Hokyoji Zen Monastery, Eitzen, MN

September 2, 2010 Tassajara Zen Mountain Center
September 17, 2010 Copperfield's Books, Petaluma, CA
September 20, 2010 Diesel Books, Oakland, CA
September 29, 2010 Cleveland Buddhist Temple, Cleveland, OH

October 15, 2010 Interdependence Project, New York, NY
October 16-17, 2010 Interdependence Project, New York, NY
October 26, 2010 Allen Memorial Hospital (McGill University), Montreal, QC, Canada
October 26, 2010 Casa Del Popolo, Montreal, QC, Canada

November 7, 2010 Dogen Translation Project, San Francisco Zen Center, San Francisco, CA
November 9, 2010 Hill Street Center, Santa Monica, CA
November 10, 2010 Dharma Zen Center, Los Angeles, CA
November 10, 2010 Against The Stream, Los Angeles, CA
November 12, 2010 An Lac Buddhist Temple, Ventura, CA
November 14, 2010 Bodhi Tree Bookstore, Los Angeles, CA
November 17, 2010 Montreal, QC, Canada

2011 TOUR (40 dates)

February 15, 2011 Kansas Zen Center, Lawrence, KS
February 17, 2011 Kansas City, MO
February 20, 2011 Cedar Rapids Zen Center, Cedar Rapids, IA
February 22, 2011 Seki's Japanese Restaurant St Louis, MO
February 26, 2011 Missouri Zen Center, St Louis, MO

March 5, 2011 Brevard Zen Center, Cocoa, FL
March 17, 2011 University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK
March 18, 2011 Saskatoon, SK
March 19-20, 2011 Saskatoon, SK

April 14, 2011 Mount Berry, GA
April 15, 2011 Atlanta, GA
April 17, 2011 Atlanta Soto Zen Center, Atlanta, GA
April 18, 2011 Atlanta, GA
April 20, 2011 Nashville, TN
April 22-24, 2011 Nashville Zen Center Retreat, Nashville, TN

May 10, 2011 An Lac Buddhist Temple, Ventura, CA
May 12, 2011 Against The Stream, Los Angeles, CA
May 29, 2011 Houston Zen Center, Houston, TX

June 18, 2011 Ordinary Mind Zendo, New York, NY

July, 2011 Starwood Festival, Wisteria Campgrounds, Pomeroy, OH
July 29, 2011 Arcata Zen Group, Arcata, CA
July 30, 2011Arcata Zen Group, Arcata, CA
July 31, 2011 North Coast Aikido Center, Arcata, CA

August 6, 2011 Sacramento Buddhist Meditation Group Sacramento, CA,
August 7, 2011 Time Tested Books, Sacramento, CA
August 7, 2011 Sacramento Buddhist Meditation Group Sacramento, CA

October 6, 2011 Zen In Ooij Nijmegen, Netherlands
October 8, 2011 San Bo Dojo, Bonn, Germany
October 9, 2011 Against The Stream Amsterdam, Netherlands
October 10, 2011 Against The Stream, Rotterdam, Netherlands
October 14, 2011 Salon with Gilles Farcet, Paris, France
October 15, 2011 Zen Retreat, Poitiers, France
October 19, 2011 Dharma Buchladen, Berlin, Germany
October 26, 2011 Bürgerwache am Siegfriedplatz, Bielefeld, Germany
October 27-30, 2011 Zen Retreat, Bielefeld, Germany

November 5, 2011 Brentwood Buddhist Meditation Group, Shenfield, Essex, UK
November 12, 2011 Against The Stream, Antwerp, Belgium
November 13, 2011 RS Yoga, Antwerp, Belgium
November 18, 2011 Village Hall, Manchester, UK
November19, 2011 Village Hall, Manchester, UK

Zen Prostitution

Now I know why I keep the comments section open.

Yesterday I sat at Angel Falls coffee shop (don't get the wrong idea, my friends in The Netherlands, this one only sells coffee, tea and pastries) wracking my brain for about three hours to come up with yesterday's post. I was trying to put my finger on the one single thing that bugged me the most about Genpo Roshi's latest enterprise.

I wasn't really satisfied with what I wrote. But I'd spent enough time on it and I thought it was OK if not quite what I wanted it to be. Then about fifteen minutes after I put it up, a commenter named Broken Yogi said in part:

"The relationship between student and teacher is supposed to be a sacred one that is untouched by worldly motives, and really is directed towards liberation and enlightenment, which by their very nature are free, in every sense of the word, including the financial sense. To transform these into a monetary business relationship of consumer and service provider is not only to debase the entire process of enlightenment, it actually brings it to a sudden end. Nothing good can possibly result from this."

And I'm like, THAT'S IT! That's the whole thing in a nutshell. What bugs me most is that he is turning the student/teacher relationship in Zen into a business arrangement. He is charging his students not so much for enlightenment as he is charging them for their relationship with him. This is Zen prostitution (I hastily added some words to that effect to the post below after reading Broken Yogi's comment).

The relationship between a Zen teacher and a deshi (to use Genpo's preferred term) is a very intimate thing. We're not talking here about someone who might occasionally attend a lecture or retreat. A deshi would be a long term one-to-one student. There would have to be some sort of formalized public initiation ceremony involved to get to that level.

To my way of thinking, saying, "You can be my deshi for a price" (which is precisely what Genpo is saying, you can read it for yourself) is like saying, "I will fall in love with you if you pay me for it." Even if you meant something like that sincerely you couldn't possibly do it. You can't decide to fall in love with someone and then just sort of will it to happen. And you can't put a price on that.

It's not that Genpo ought not to be allowed to do it. I'm saying it can't be done. It's just impossible. For anyone.

As I said before, I have no problems with Zen teachers who charge for lectures, seminars, books and so on. I also have no problem with Zen teachers who take donations. Everybody's gotta find a way to pay the rent. I can even see setting up a tuition system for priest training or setting up an ongoing donation system to help keep a temple functional. No problem.

But charging for the teacher/student relationship is not a good thing. Because it can't really be done. What you'd have if you charged for such a relationship could only ever possibly be an imitation of that relationship. It's like the difference between going on the Cedar Creek Mine Ride at Cedar Point amusement park and going on a real runaway coal cart in a real abandoned mine shaft. It's not even a good approximation of the thing. It's a poor imitation created for amusement and profit. The real runaway coal cart might kill you. If the Cedar Creek Mine Ride injured you, you could sue. Same deal here.

The reason I write about this is not to constantly point a finger at Genpo and go "shame on you." He's not gonna listen to me anyway. I'm concerned that if this goes unchallenged by someone like me who is in a position to challenge it, then it could become more widespread. It probably already is. What are these "Big Mind® Facilitator Training" things Genpo offers? My guess is people are seeing Big Mind® as a potential money maker and they want to get in on it too. Genpo's model for Big Mind® would appear to be based on a McDonald's type enterprise where you grant licensed franchisees the right to use the name and logo as long as they send part of their revenue back to headquarters.

If Genpo didn't insist on conflating Big Mind® with Zen I wouldn't be griping about it. It'd be just one more scam meditation thing. But he does by using the standard terminology of Zen, such as the word deshi as used in a Zen context.

Becoming someone's deshi is an organic thing. The ceremonies involved are more like an engagement ceremony or even a wedding. They are a public affirmation of a relationship that already exists. They're not like the first down payment on an extended tuition plan.

Maybe my saying this won't really matter much in the end. I doubt it will have any real impact on Genpo's business. But I gotta say it.

What's So Wrong With Genpo Roshi?

Thanks for the overwhelmingly positive response to the previous post! I'm really glad that most people got what I was trying to say. But I'd like to address a few of the dissenting voices. Here are some comments from people who disliked that post:

• God this Genpo thing is getting really tired.

• I generally find your posts(and the one book I've read so far) to be interesting and enlightening. (But) I find your apparent attachment to the endless crusade against Genpo quite boring and uninspiring. I guess it just doesn't fit with me that a zen master could be so full of bile.

• Here's some intelligent discourse on the matter at hand if you're tired of Brads ego striven rants. http://sweepingzen.com/2011/11/26/a-meditation-on-scandals/

Genpo himself has said, "I'm not trying to justify my actions. I'm very remorseful. But this kind of judgmental mudslinging of Buddhist teachers is worse. It's making Buddhism look pretty pathetic."

So why do I bother going after Genpo so often?

It's because I think it's vital for someone inside the Zen community to say something about what Genpo is doing. In spite of the open letter to Genpo from a group of concerned Buddhist teachers and in spite of the article by Adam Tebbe the poster quoted above thinks is "intelligent discourse on the matter at hand" nobody has really addressed what I feel to be the actual matter at hand.

I didn't see anyone speaking out about Big Mind® until after Genpo was involved in a major sex scandal. But, as I've said many times before, I think Genpo's sex life is pretty much a non-issue. It's not nice to cheat on your wife. But, then again, we don't even really know what was going on in Genpo's relationship with Mrs. Genpo.

The things Genpo was doing that bothered me were not what he was hiding. It was the things he was doing in the open. Let me break down this latest scam for you in terms of why I think it matters enough for me to comment upon.

For those who haven't seen it, the previous post was a parody of a webpage entitled Membership: Three Paths to Practice that can be found on the Roshi's Big Mind™ page. I hardly had to change a thing.

The page says:
"We are pleased to be able to introduce and explain the paths that are now open to you for continuing to study and work with Zen Master D. Genpo Merzel, which we preface with this note from Genpo Roshi himself."

The term Zen Master is a joke. There is no such thing as a Zen Master.

It may be a translation of the Japanese term 禅師 (zenji), which could indeed be translated as "Zen Master." But I have never heard this term used to refer anyone who is currently alive. It's considered much to respectful of a designation to be applied to anyone who might actually hear you use it. It would be highly embarrassing to be called "zenji."

To refer to anyone living as a Zen Master is simply ridiculous. To refer to yourself as a Zen Master is so ridiculous as to be bizarre. I have applied the term to myself occasionally just to demonstrate how incredibly absurd it is for anyone to call himself a Zen Master.

The term Big Mind® is stolen from Shunryu Suzuki's book Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. There it is used by Suzuki as a translation of 大心 (daishin), which could mean "big mind" or "big heart." The Roshi has trademarked this term, which is an incredibly obnoxious thing to do.

I used to deal with international trademarks for Tsuburaya Productions. So I know a bit about how that game works. You don't have to actually create or own a character, concept or name in order to trademark it. Furthermore, trademarks are assigned to specific categories of things. Thus if you trademark the name Big Mind® for use as a meditation system, you don't necessarily have the trademark on it for galoshes, dog food, edible underwear or patent medicine. Each category is a separate thing. And even if you own all these trademarks in the United States, that doesn't mean you own them in Indonesia, Rawanda, Finland or even Canada. Each territory is also separate. And each category in each territory will cost you at the very least $1000 to register.

What's more, because it's not tied to copyright, anyone who wants to trademark any particular character or phrase can do so with no questions asked. So if you found out that Disney had neglected to register the character Mickey Mouse in the category of videogram (DVDs and other types of home video) in, say, Botswanaland, you could register it yourself and wait for Disney to notice. Then you could name your price. I faced variations on this particular scenario a number of times.

So what Genpo has done is made Big Mind®, a standard concept in Zen Buddhism for a few hundred years, his own property.

I've noticed he has switched from putting a little "tm" next to Big Mind® and now displays a circled "r" (®). This means his registration has been accepted by the US government.

And mow he has turned the relationship between Zen teacher and Zen student into a commercial proposition. He will sell you Enlightenment.

His webpage says:
"People who are here in this lifetime to commit themselves to accomplishing Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi may request to become a deshi and to work alongside Roshi in a personal manner. A deshi is one whose first priority in this life is to serve and study the Dharma and who sees their heart to heart connection with Roshi as a cornerstone in that pursuit."

The word deshi（弟子）is usually translated as "pupil." But in a Zen context a more appropriate English translation would be "disciple." It is not a term that is applied lightly.

The term "Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi" is a Sanskrit phrase that appears in the Heart Sutra. It means "complete unsurpassed perfect enlightenment." In many schools of Buddhism it is considered to be utterly impossible to achieve such a thing in a single lifetime. Again, this is not a term that's used lightly.

It is not, for example, the equivalent of kensho (見性 "seeing into one's true nature") or even satori (悟り "awakening" in the Buddhist sense). Anuttara samyak sambodhi is much, much bigger than that. It's what Buddha did and what Shariputra did. Even one takes the philosophical stance that we are all the equals of Buddha and Shariputra, simple etiquette demands that you not place yourself on that level. It's just... gross, y'know.

His website says:
"If you are one of the hundreds of people who became students of Roshi in the past and wish to continue, we ask of you to clearly affirm again your desire to continue as a student in the Big Heart Zen School. Please state your aspiration and the vision you see of your commitment or simply give a phone number and we will set up a call."

A few mouse clicks on the website will lead you to a PayPal-linked page where you can express the vision of your commitment in terms of US dollars.

Now, look. I don't mind Genpo or any other Zen teacher making some money. I charge for my talks. I charge for my books. I'm looking into ways to make more money with my blogging. I'll probably eventually sell some DVDs or other such stuff. I'm not above that. Next year I'll probably be offering multi-day seminars and there will be a price for attending those.

I think the prices Genpo often charges for his seminars is excessive. Here's one that runs $8,000, for example. But I'm not even that fussed about his prices.

What bugs me is that Genpo is charging not just for seminars and videos. He is now clearly and unambiguously charging money for enlightenment. This is like selling indulgences in heaven or promising 72 virgins (or raisins?) in Paradise to someone who blows himself up on a bus. It's the oldest trick in the religious scam book. You charge folks for something they can't even define, let alone see or feel. Genpo himself gets to determine what is and what isn't enlightenment.

For as long as I've been teaching Zen people have criticized my stylistic choices in presenting myself and my practice by saying I don't take Zen seriously. In fact I do take Zen very seriously. That's why I get so hot under the collar when I see it abused in this fashion.

There are a million scamsters out there plying their trade in a variety of religions. Some are way worse than Genpo Roshi. But they aren't presenting themselves as Zen Masters in the Soto tradition of Dogen Zenji.

There are Zen teachers out there putting their dicks in places they shouldn't put their dicks. But they aren't (as far as I know) representing this as Zen practice. And even if they do represent it as Zen practice in their private encounters, they aren't representing it as Zen practice to the general public.

But Genpo is representing something ugly and dangerous as Zen practice. And as long as he keeps doing it, I'll keep bitching about it. This is not mudslinging. This is serious.

New Levels of Minionship Available Now!

Following in the footsteps of the venerable Zen Master Genpo Merzel, I'd like to announce the following arrangements.

I am now offering several levels of commitment to those who want to follow me and be my minions, underlings, or subordinates.

I am calling my new method of Zen practice Big Swindle™ Zen! It allows you to be ripped off and cheated by a real Zen Master — me! Your money will go to support such incredible projects as repairing my car, buying me the boxed set of Ozzy Osbourne/Randy Rhoads CDs, paying for trips out to California to get away from the damned cold in Ohio, new clothes from the Village Discount Outlet in Cuyahoga Falls, burritos at Taco Tantos for me and Dave my upstairs neighbor, new strings for my bass and much, much more.

Here's how it works:

Membership
Three Paths of Study and Practice

Dear Followers of the Way and Big Swindle™ Zen Practitioners,

We are pleased to be able to introduce and explain Big Swindle™ Zen by B. Odo Warner Roshi, which we preface with this note from Odo Warner Roshi himself:

I would like to bring clarity to my relationship with all those who desire to study the Buddha Way with me. I feel it is important to honor all commitments to the Dharma and to appreciate the complexity of a relationship with me as a vessel for the Buddha Dharma. I am grateful for the opportunity to convey the teaching on as many levels as I can.

But I'm a busy guy. I got things to do. So you gotta make it worth my while to waste my time with you. So you gotta pay up!

Because my time is valuable I would like to be concise in explaining how one can continue or begin studying with me.

My commitment to you is to bring forth the Dharma in a way that works with your varied lifestyles and time constraints, one that is affordable and also respects and honors your personal spiritual journey. I have worked alongside the Big Swindle™ staff to provide you options for studying with me that suit your individual needs and interests, and I hope you will join us in continuing to awaken the world and raise global consciousness and get me some more cool stuff.

Love,
Odo

Here are the three paths available:

Big Swindle™ Zen Subordinate

Anyone who wishes to study Big Swindle™ Zen can have the opportunity to learn from the founder and creator of Big Swindle™ in the comfort and convenience of their own home through unlimited access to all of Odo Roshi's latest video teachings as well as the entire archive of his teachings on the Big Swindle™ website. In other words we're offering you the opportunity to pay to watch videos of Roshi that have heretofore been available for free!

Although some recordings are accessible through venues such as YouTube, only members of Big Swindle™ Zen will have access to the complete and ever-increasing collection. That's right! Roshi will be pointing a camera at himself and saying even more useless stuff! Members may also submit questions to Roshi through the Big Swindle™ website and will find answers to selected questions in his blog whenever he gets around to it.

Benefits include:

• A 10% discount on all Big Swindle™ Events and all items in the store. (This does not include Facilitator trainings which cost way more.)

• Access to all previously free video archives and continuously expanding crappy cheap videos in the video library.

• Direct submission of questions to Roshi via the web blog. Maybe he'll actually read a few of them! If he gets time.

• Contributing through your generosity towards getting the Big Swindle™ Process out into the world and raising global consciousness and getting more people to send more money to Roshi. You want Roshi to be happy, don't you?

Dana: Minimum donation of $375/yr or $30/month

These videos are free to access now at http://www.youtube.com/user/doubtboy

*** Starting soon, these will only be available to paying Big Swindle™ Zen Practitioners!

Big Swindle™ Zen Underling

Those who have been students in the past and those who desire to begin study of the BuddhaDharma with Odo Roshi can apply for acceptance into the Big Swindle™ Zen School. To be a student in the Big Swindle™ Zen School means you have a heartfelt commitment to study and serve the Dharma. It also helps if you're female and attractive. Your desire to be recognized as a student of Odo Roshi is not a binding obligation of form but an expression of your heart connection with Roshi and appreciation of the opportunity to learn and serve the Dharma together in this life (if you know what we mean!).

Big Swindle™ Zen Minion

People who are here in this lifetime to commit themselves to accomplishing Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi may request to become a minion and to work alongside Roshi in a personal manner (if you know what we mean!). A minion is one whose first priority in this life is to serve and study the Dharma and especially the Roshi. It's one who sees their heart to heart connection with Roshi as a cornerstone in that pursuit and is an attractive young lady (brunettes with shapely behinds preferred, but all will be considered because you never know).

Going forward as either an underling or minion:

In either case these are heart relationships which do not imply ownership or obligation in either direction (especially on the part of Odo Roshi, who may choose to just ignore you at any time especially if you're annoying and/or not particularly attractive). What is essential is the heart to serve the Dharma and grow and share our lives together without agenda (or much of an agenda anyway).

If you are one of the gazillions of people who became students of Roshi in the past and wish to continue, we ask of you to clearly affirm again your desire to continue as a student in the Big Swindle™ Zen School (which means sending the Roshi more money and sending a newer photo to make sure you meet the qualifications). To assure that those who wish to study with Roshi have reasonable access to him and that his schedule is manageable Roshi will be limiting the number of students he can accept into this practice to those who pay the required amount or are cute enough to have their fees waived.

If you have the aspiration to be either a underling or minion of Odo Roshi and the Big Swindle™ Zen school please send an email to spoozilla@gmail.com. Please state your aspiration and the vision you see of your commitment as well as how much you intend to pay and 2 recent full body photographs (front and rear view, bikini or nude shots are preferred). One of Odo Roshi's minions will summarize the information and send him the pics if they're good. Then, if you qualify we will set up a face to face or phone interview with Roshi.

Love,
The Big Swindle™ Staff

(This is just way too fucking easy!)

Reader Questions

Hello, readers. I thought I'd waste your time with a few questions from people who read my stuff along with my answers to them.

Dear Brad,

I have been trying to develop my Zen practice since about a year ago. I looked around for a local group but couldn't find one, and so got some assistance from the internet. But essentially I was practicing on my own.

I kept looking for a local group though, and then suddenly one was started in my home town in July! It is being run by a monk in the Soto tradition who is a great guy, very careful to emphasize that he is not a teacher but leads us after zazen in collective reading of various texts.

Anyway, here is my dilemma. I have been very happy with my involvement with the group and am planning to become more involved, with a Rohatsu overnight sit this week and planning to go on my first sesshin next year. I have discovered a thorny issue though: Genpo Merzel

You see the group that I sit with (about half a dozen of us only at the moment) is part of the XXXX Zen Sangha, which in turn is affiliated to the White Plum Asangha. I suppose my concerns are these:

1. On their website it openly seems to promote the "Big Mind" project, about which I have concerns not least of which after reading some of your blogs

2. The Genpo Merzel issue seems to be absent from mention in anything I have seen so far

3. His name is mentioned affectionately in blogs and notes that do appear, and it seems as if he did good work in this country in the past

4. I do not know him at all and don't want to be doing a disservice by being overly negative about the "issue"

So I suppose before investing a good deal of time and emotion into the group, I suppose I am casting around for information and perspectives. I know that of course I must ultimately make my own mind up about this.

If you are able to give any pointers at all that would be fantastic.

Hm. Well just because these guys know Genpo doesn't mean they're bad. Their promotion of Big Mind™ is a bit iffy, though. Here's why I think so.

My understanding was that Genpo retired his Soto Zen monk status and is now just a Big Mind™ guy. Big Mind™ was probably earning him more money anyhow, so I can't imagine it did him any harm to drop the Zen. All the Zen people did was bug him when he acted like an asshole. Now he's free to do whatever he likes as king of his own kingdom.

So the only thing that sounds iffy to me about your place is that they're calling themselves a Soto place but promoting Big Mind™. These are apparently two different things now.

BUT!! (note the extraneous exclamation points) if you're basically happy with the group, I'd stay with them until such time as you're not happy with them anymore. Perhaps you can get to the point where you can just ask, "Hey what's the deal with the Big Mind™ stuff?" If you like their answer, stay. If you don't, say goodbye.

Hope that helps a little.

Next question:


Hey, how's it going? I've been reading some of your most well known quotes today and it suddenly struck me that I've been practicing sitting for the last few weeks or maybe even months without thinking about it. What I mean is that I've been sitting for 6 months and recently I haven't read about zen nor thought about its ideas, I've just been living life regularly outside of my zen practice. I'm not a Buddhist, I guess, but I don't want to be just someone who sits for no reason. I think having a Buddhist/zen intention while I sit would be a lot more beneficial. Does this make sense, should I stay more in tune with zen if I keep sitting?

Just sit. You don't need a reason. Buddha was not a Buddhist.

Nishijima Roshi always said, "Zazen is a state without intention." So the fact that you lack intention is a plus.

As far as learning about Zen, I may be the wrong person to ask. I generally do not study Buddhism in any serious way. I mean I sit a lot. But as for book learning, I'm pretty much a dunce. I have a load of Buddhist books that I pull out when I need a reference. But I almost never read them otherwise. If that's the sort of thing you want you could try getting a degree in Buddhist studies. Lots of universities offer that now. Or so I'm told. Maybe I should get one.

It doesn't sound to me like you want or need that, though. So just sit.

*****

And here's Zero Defex on the radio in Manchester, England! We're song number 8 on this set. Also the DJs tell you what Brad Warner is "really" like.