Zen

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Do Not Enter the Hall Smelling of Onions! Or, should Liturgy be stimulating?

In Dogen’s instructions on conduct in the meditation hall, from which the above quotation comes, he is keen to protect practitioners from an excess of stimulation. Interestingly, he also considers the possibility of someone entering the hall while intoxicated with wine accidentally! His better known ‘Rules for Zazen’ (Zazen Gi) underline the need for a space that is calm and quiet and this is because zazen is quite the opposite of seeking an intense ‘spiritual’ experience. It is a matter of living one’s life fully even when it does not present us with anything of very great interest – ie most of the time! If one chases any sort of ‘experience’ at all as a goal in life, there is a very strong danger that we will constantly imagine that fulfillment lies elsewhere, and that is a sure-fire route towards disappointment. Zazen is nothing more or less than the living of life itself – fully, consciously, openly.

Dōgen - Wikipedia

What, then, of Christian worship? What is its primary purpose? Is it even wise to talk about worship as having a purpose at all? There is a real risk that we see liturgy as a kind of spiritual stimulation, a ‘high’ to keep us going through the drudge of the week until the next boost comes along. We might see that in terms of a mental insight, an aesthetic experience, a sense of community, an extraordinary encounter with the divine. None of these things is bad, but what if they don’t come our way?

It seems to be against everything that we imagine to be necessary for church growth to suggest that worship should understimulate rather than overstimulate us, but I think I’m going to try now to make a case for just that!

I think that our patterns of prayer and ritual can have a very positive role in forming our approach to life as a whole, and if they are to do that well, they need to be capable of seeing us through monotonous, unappealing and uncomfortable aspects of life as well as joyful and exciting ones. To do that, they need to school us in the art of finding equilibrium and stability, of staying put and paying attention, of receptiveness and subtle awareness. If our liturgical or ritual life aims only to provide us with excitement, stimuli or points of interest, we might end up seeking these rather than giving ourselves fully to the longer and slower work of patient attentiveness.

So what might the ritual practices be that can nurture this quality of balance?

First of all, repetition is our friend in this approach to ritual prayer. Repeated texts and gestures instill in us habits of attention and focus. And it’s not as if these things are devoid of content – what more theology do we need than that contained in the Jesus Prayer?

Secondly, the use of liturgical chant provides a steady pulse to our prayer, aids memory and reduces the temptation of over-expression, which is another kind of stimulus. I would love to see the chanting of liturgical texts become the norm once more for most of our liturgical services, even small-scale ones (and it really is no less virus-emitting than speech!).

Thirdly, the use of aesthetics that promote focus will help us with our attentive stillness. I strongly believe that church buildings should be beautiful, not to provide sensory stimulation alone but to enhance the sense of harmony and attention. This might suggest a simpler aesthetic with clean lines and few points of distraction but I think that other approaches can offer the same thing. For example, I do not find a Greek church with icons everywhere to be over-stimulating and I think this is because the form of the building itself is usually very simple, with a focal point on the apse, emphasised by the Royal Doors in front of it. There is only one altar and usually a minimum of furniture. And the icons themselves are an invitation to attentiveness – they do not provide drama and ‘interesting detail’ but stillness and presence.

Finally, all ritual prayer should be offered with care; not hurried or sloppy but measured and unfussy. There is a particular onus on the one presiding to embody that sense of collected presence and careful attention, not getting in the way of the community’s prayer and in no way self-promoting. This does not mean that clergy and worship leaders need to leave their personality at the door, but simply remember that they are not the focus of attention. That’s one of the reasons our church strongly favours the use of liturgical vestments – they are not my clothes expressing my personality. Each person praying also might pay attention to how they are present in the liturgy, perhaps even if they are participating from home through a screen.

I want to be clear that I am not rejecting any aspect of liturgy that is emotionally uplifting, simply suggesting that this should not be sought out as the highest expression of our prayer and that we would do well to nurture habits that sustain us through every moment of life rather than offering an escape from it.

jmcluckie

Anti-Siesta!

Sleep specialists recommend that short naps of no more than 15 minutes can have a beneficial effect on our energy levels and alertness. Any longer than that sees us getting into a deeper level of sleep which makes it harder to wake up without feeling drowsy.

But I would like to propose a different, or perhaps complementary practice. Why not spend 15 minutes each day being awake? I mean really awake. The practice of zazen, of seated meditation, is not an exercise in relaxation as such, and is certainly not some kind of dream-like state. It is simply the practice of being awake, of being alert to the world around us, of being receptive to everything without devouring it, of open-eyed stillness in the face of whatever is around us. It is not the shutting-off of thoughts and not a retreat from the world but a simple exercise of attention. As such, it is, at the very least, a way of expressing our capacity for wakefulness and a way of strengthening that capacity.

The term wakefulness has synonyms in the religious vocabulary of Christianity and Buddhism, and probably others too. In Christianity, the desert tradition gave us nepsis – watchfulness or sobriety – and in Buddhism, the experience of enlightenment is an experience of awakening. In fact, in the latter, I think that Soto Zen would prefer to speak of being-awake so as not to suggest a movement from one state to another – enlightenment is not a goal to attain but a present reality to express. In Christian experience, watchfulness is also a constant invitation – ‘today, if only you would hear his voice…’ – and the vivid words of Compline come to mind:

Be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist, steadfast in the faith.

We needn’t get too into the question of ‘external’ diabolical threats to see the wisdom of these words. The fact is that we are vulnerable when we are not awake and our lack of watchfulness closes us off from others.

So don’t give up the siestas, but do think about having a time to be fully awake each day!

jmcluckie

Speaking Truth to Power – Zen Style

There is a well-known legend of the meeting between the first Zen Patriarch, Bodhidharma, and the Chinese Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty, part of which forms the first case in the koan collection, the Hekiganroku or Blue Cliff Record. Dogen includes the longer version of it in fascicle 31b, Gyoji Ge, of his Shobogenzo but the legend is many centuries older.

BodhidharmaYoshitoshi1887.jpg

Well known as a benefactor of Buddhist religious foundations, the Emperor begins his conversation with Bodhidharma by enumerating his many achievements in the promotion of Buddhism. He asks, ‘What is the merit of having done all this?’ Bodhidharma says, ‘There is no merit.’ When pressed further by the emperor, he goes on to describe such ‘minor achievements’ of humans as little more than a cause of desire. They’re not real. When asked what, then, is real merit, he says;

When pure wisdom is complete, the essence is empty and serene. Such merit cannot be attained through worldly actions.

The rest of the dialogue goes like this:

Emperor: ‘What is the foremost sacred truth?’

Bodhidharma: ‘Vast emptiness, nothing sacred.’

Emperor: ‘Who is it that faces me?’

Bodhidharma: ‘I don’t know.’

The emperor didn’t understand so Bodhidharma just went on his way.

Human power, at whatever level, desires credit, acclaim, recognition for its successes (‘no merit’, ‘vast emptiness’ is what Bodhidharma offers instead). It desires shrines which might serve as a suitable backdrop for staged political moments (‘nothing sacred’ is what Bodhidharma offers instead). It desires tame gurus to give affirmation and credibility (‘I don’t know’ is what Bodhidharma offers instead). But Bodhidharma’s responses are not mere nihilism – they are a challenge to the usefulness of the questions themselves. The path to an awakened life is not formed by might, and certainly not by casting aside any who might stand in the way with tear gas and rubber bullets. It is not ‘formed’ at all, but opens up in ‘vast emptiness’ of compassion, the boundless openness that is founded on ‘not-knowing’. ‘Not knowing’ is the wisdom that listens to all sounds, to all voices, in the way that the Bodhisattva Kannon does. ‘Not knowing’ is the refusal to assert dominance, the refusal to possess another in any way.

I wonder what would happen if a certain present-day emperor decided to spend an equal length of time in zazen as he spends on his Twitter feed…

jmcluckie

Resurrection and Enlightenment

What Vision Do We Have for the Deep Sea? | Science | News

There is a Zen koan that is not to be found in any of the classic collections but first came to my attention through Bill Johnston’s writing on it. It goes like this:

In the Sea of Ise, ten thousand feet down, lies a Stone.
I wish to pick up that stone without wetting my hands.
On the stone a name is inscribed. What is the name? On one side of the name it reads, “Cannot get wet.” On the other side of the name it reads, “Cannot get dry.”

The koan is found in the collection of Miscellaneous Koans used by the Sanbo Kyodan lineage and you can find a version of it in Sr Elaine McIness’s book, The Flowing Bridge (p.72) and a lovely interpretation of it in Ruben Habito’s Living Zen, Loving God (p.107). Johnston’s reference to it is in Letters to Contemplatives (p.72).

This koan speaks to me in Eastertide as an expression of the risen life of the one who has descended to the depths. As Christ descended to the deepest darkness and yet was not defeated by death (‘cannot get wet’), and ascended to risen life of wounded, compassionate presence filling all things (‘cannot get dry’), so the one who dies with him is raised with him. What one dies to is a limited self; what one is raised to is an empty-fullness. As the wound-bearing Christ showed, this risen life is not something disembodied and yet it is boundless. It is of great comfort to know the boundlessness of compassion in a time of isolation.

The resurrection is not comprehensible in biological terms, but it is ‘graspable’ in spiritual practice. The ‘descent’ is known to any who enter stillness without thought or theory, and the rising is known by any who are awakened to a compassionate life free from clinging (noli me tangere). Of course, these two movements are not straightforwardly chronological but form a constant and single flow. We enter into that flow in contemplation and we live it in every moment.

jmcluckie

Zen Psalms

Norman Fischer is a Zen teacher of Jewish heritage who wrote a thoughtful and poetic version of 93 of the Psalms called Opening to You.

Image result for opening to you fischer

The ‘you’ of the title is his way of getting round the heavily freighted nouns that are often used to refer to God in scripture – all his psalms invoke God directly in the second person and thus have an intimate feel. I have a second-hand version in which Fischer wrote an inscription to the original owners. He wrote a quotation; ‘Your unsayable name is glorious’, a verse from one of his translations.

He wrote this collection after a visit to Thomas Merton’s old monastery of Gethsemani almost 20 years ago. In a monastery, one cannot escape the Psalms – they form the backbone of every monastic office – but their language can be strange to us. Sometimes angry, sometimes vengeful, sometimes intense, sometimes remorseful but often glorious, personal and richly coloured, these ancient songs will stand a great deal of re-imagining. Fischer’s versions are faithful to the text but just occasionally angle the meaning towards the insights that have come to him from years of seated zen meditation, insights that delve deep into the nature of consciousness as it manifests itself in the sitter and reveals the nature of all that is. Here is his version of Psalm 23, which feels very recognisable but has some lovely turns of phrase that introduce some less familiar thoughts:

YOU ARE MY SHEPHERD, I am content
You lead me to rest in the sweet grasses
To lie down by the quiet waters
And I am refreshed

You lead me down the right path
The path that unwinds in the pattern of your name

And even if I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will not fear
For you are with me
Comforting me with your rod and your staff
Showing me each step

You prepare a table for me
In the midst of my adversity
And moisten my head with oil

Surely my cup is overflowing
And goodness and kindness will follow me
All the days of my life
And in the long days beyond
I will always live within your house

I am struck by that phrase, ‘the path that unwinds in the pattern of your name’ in place of the more familiar ‘he leads me in right paths for his name’s sake’. For it is the unfolding pattern of our footsteps that reveals Truth to us – this life and not some other, imagined, idealised life that is our true teacher, manifesting our nature as eternal, made in the image and likeness of the Creator. There is great refreshment in choosing simply to walk the path that unwinds before us and not to crave some other. Even in adversity there is a table set for us.