Round and round. The enso is the image of a usually incomplete circle rooted in the Zen conception of our path on earth. A Dharma Wheel of sorts, but not exactly. It doesn't have spokes. Just a void in the center and a circular path around it. And another void on the outside of the path.
It's the image of the circle I've been going round for ages. I'm about to take another lap.
Study, yes much study this time around, and all of it, well almost all, reminds me of just how much study of the sutras and the Prajnaparamita I've already done. Is there anything I haven't already read? Any talk I haven't already heard? Any awakening I haven't already experienced?
Of course there are plenty of them. Oh, so many. But at some point the Zen master pushes the student off the veranda and into the mud. Mud is better than words. That's satori.
My study texts this practice period are growing in number. Good thing most of them are online and I don't have to carry around a rucksack full of books, which, back in the day, I basically did. There were so many books, so many sutras, so many commentaries on the sutras, so many practice manuals and so many commentaries on the practice of Zen, so many haiku expressing the essence of Zen, and on and on and on, words, words, words.
Texts:
Before I started this practice period, I read Big Sur by Jack Kerouac and saw the movie of the book several times. It's the somewhat fictionalized story of Jack's deterioration into alcoholism and madness after the success of On the Road. This bhikkhu, Jack, went to pieces. Success made him crazy. Or did it?
The expectations that others placed on him because of his success with On the Road were closer to the source of his mental and physical collapse. But those expectations weren't exactly the reason why.
Perhaps unknowingly, he'd created an image of himself in the book (On the Road) that was nothing (much) like him. In some strange reversal of roles, many people seemed to believe he, Jack, was like the character Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) which is just completely backwards. I didn't read On the Road back in the day; I can't say why. What I can say is that I purchased three Jack Kerouac novels one summer day in 1964 or 65 at Tower Books. They were: Dharma Bums, Big Sur, and Desolation Angels.
Why those and not others? Who can say? By the mid-'60s, Kerouac had published a fairly large body of work, but I remember on the shelf at Tower there weren't that many of his books. It's possible only those were there at the time, though I imagine that as his most popular work, On the Road was also there.
Whatever the case, I read -- no, I practically devoured -- Dharma Bums first. My god, what a story, what a tale, what astonishing journey, upanddown California, mountains, valleys and coastline, and back again. Scenes of endless parties in Bay Area shacks, Oakland, Berkeley, Marin. Trails to nowhere and the sea, mountain climbing in the highest high Sierras; tramping on freight trains to the moon.
Hiding out in a fire lookout shack in the Cascades, cruising through the Skid Row of Seattle. What a tale, what an amazing adventure. Throughout, Jack (called Ray) and Gary Snyder (Japhy Ryder) commit Zen lunacy, practice Buddhism, become Bodhisattvas, and revel in their Awakenness and eccentricity. Wow. Where did this come from? Zen? What's Zen? I had only vague notions of Buddhism at the time, but Zen? Nah. Nothing.
Practically everyone from that Beat era is dead now, but Gary Snyder is still alive, and supposedly he doesn't like being categorized as a Beat poet, though he is an acknowledged Zen Master. If it hadn't been for him, it's unlikely many of the Beat writers would have delved into Buddhism as deeply as they did.
But in my adolescence, none of this was known to me. I wanted to find out. What is Zen?
I started reading Big Sur and I stopped and didn't pick it up for a long time because it was tough, hard, hard, hard on the psyche and the emotions, and still there was Zen, which I realize now was what kept Jack from going completely over the edge at the time, but later it wouldn't/couldn't save him.
Finally, Desolation Angels: I may have got only five pages into it. It's something of a sequel/continuation/ expansion of Dharma Bums, focused on Jack's time at the fire lookout shack on Desolation Peak in Washington. I've figured out this was in 1955 or 56 (but I'm sure adepts know exactly when Jack went up to Desolation Peak). So it wasn't long before he hit it big in the literary firmament. Zen is not only still there, it is at the core of his being on top of the mountain.
So OK, I've said many times now how important Kerouac was to my interest in and discovery of Zen and the Bodhisattva Way and all that.
For this practice period, Dharma Bums became one of my texts, and I finished re-reading it a couple of days ago. It's as inspirational, aspirational, and as moving now as it ever was back in the day. A Zen lunatic bhikkhu wandering, wandering and never quite finding what was already there. When I finished the book, I realized, perhaps for the first time, how closely my own wandering mirrored his. Perhaps it was for the same purpose. I don't know.
Other texts: Shantideva's A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, the primary text assignment that we were given. I've read it in the Stephen Batchelor translation and listened to two versions in audiobooks. I had only read excerpts in the past, and having now read and heard the whole thing, I'm not sure it's particularly helpful. Setting aside the florid language, it seems to have been written to avoid the point rather than to make it. To hide it, if you will behind a screen of beautifully carved marble and gem encrusted draperies, Not unlike Indian architecture, often very beautiful but very concealing. And, too, it's not unlike the way I've experienced how East Indians avoid direct statements when speaking about pretty much anything, always curving around or sidling into whatever it is. Shantideva does that too, and for me, it's annoying and frustrating. But that's my Western mind putting up barriers.
When you can sit with two of my other texts this practice period, the Diamond Sutra, and The Platform Sutra, and be relieved by their utter simplicity and straightforwardness, Shantideva's indirection is perhaps unnecessarily burdensome. Although both sutras have extensive commentaries, you don't really need them to grasp the meaning of the texts. It's right there, unhidden, though complete understanding takes some effort. Both Sakyamuni (as the World Honored One in the Diamond Sutra) and Hui-neng (as The Master) in The Platform Sutra make it if not easy, at least comprehensible and direct.
There are probably a dozen other Buddhist texts I'm using as guides and helps during this practice period, and I'll be meeting with another Dharma teacher later this week so there might be more texts added to the pile, but that's OK. Mud is still better than words, but the words are there -- and are still needed -- so long as we are thought-ruled creatures.
Other realizations (satori): the sentient beings we as Bodhisattva vow to Awaken and liberate: nearly all of them are already Awakened and liberated. They can teach us, and many do if we pay attention. Those who aren't and need our help are becoming more and more difficult to reach. (I might expand on that another time.)
Another: Bodhisattva's deep compassion for all sentient beings is not fundamentally in the material world. It is a matter of mind-Awakening more than anything else, so that in many cases, Bodhisattva compassion, bodhicitta, doesn't involve physical charity or even concern for physical/emotional well-being at all. Satori: I've been doing it wrong all these years. And I, praise be, am not the only one.
