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Hello!  Just a short note for now – I am traveling through the month of September and will be taking a break from posting.  I will return at the beginning of October to continue looking at the Great Disciples.  Expect fresh posts starting around October 1st. May you have an inspiring month! Thank you for [...]

Are psychotics just contemplatives with more rigid personalities? Are contemplatives just psychotics who have integrated their experiences into a healthier personality structure?

These lines from a fascinating recent academic paper (“Lo, I Will Be With You”: Conceptual Problems in Distinguishing Psychotic and Spiritual Experience) by my Dharma-and-blood brother Hondo David Rutschman express the core of my thinking around a topic that has come up in several conversations I’ve had since Two Shores came out.  In the paper, Dave asks how Martin Luther King’s hearing the voice of God relates to the voice-hearing of a homeless and “crazy” acquaintance of Dave’s.  A main study he cites from 1993 found that when measured by the standard “Mysticism Scale” measure of mystical experience, hospitalized psychotics were indistinguishable from long-time, established religious contemplatives.  So are they misunderstood mystics, or are we psychotics “passing” as religious?  Or is there a more grey and more rich way of understanding the two?

In Two Shores, I get into a description of a meditation-induced state that, while having some elements of Dharma energy and insight, could just as easily be labeled psychotic.  I was a little bit torn about including the account in the book – it’s no fun to tell the world you’re crazy, on the one hand, and on the other it’s a monastic offense akin to patricide to claim supernatural powers (in this case a highly self-centered form of “mind-reading”).  But it was an important part of my story, as was the more severe break of a friend of mine and the still more severe break of a former monk who would sometimes visit, both of which I also recount.  All of these experiences at the time helped to shatter some of the cult-like inability I found in the Japanese monastery to honestly assess whether the practice was bearing wholesome fruits or not, so I didn’t feel I could gloss over them in the book.  As a result, I’ve found that for at least a few people that is the section they can most relate to.  Certain people, at least, seem all-too-familiar with the grey and shaky line between meditative opening and psychotic break.

So does intensive meditation lead to insanity?  And if it does, is that insanity just the deluded world’s name for the taboo of liberation, or is it a dangerous side-road that misses the vital connected and grounded compassion of authentic awakening?  How should we understand Kennet Roshi’s visions, not to mention Keizan’s?  The Avatamsaka Sutra?  Crazy, or more true than anything else?  What do you think?

For me, I have always felt called by the grounded-ness of Buddhist practice.  Before getting into Dharma, I had related to spirituality as taking place on the “astral plane,” and imagined that spiritual energy came from “above” – the opposite of the ground.  While that way of practice (I was dabbling in magic and my own distorted version of neo-paganism) offered me some important openings and really established for me that my life needed to be dedicated to spirituality, the cosmic highs had inevitable cosmic crashes.  It was at the bottom of just such a cosmic crash that I was “born again” (hallelujah!) as a Buddhist, having seen clearly that I couldn’t keep looking up to find the way.  That the Dharma offered genuine and even wildly cosmic spirituality that was at the same time always grounded in the earth beneath our feet and the physical body we inhabit, was a revelation.

So, while the “astral” experiences can continue to come or not, when they do I can glean what there is to glean from them and then simply go forward in the “real,” muddy work of the five senses, the mind, my relationships, the deep fact of my breath.  In that sense, it doesn’t matter so much whether it is “ultimately” psychosis or liberation – either way, the response is the same.  Appreciate, learn, move on.

Whether we suspect that they are psychotic or are certain that they’re enlightened, I think it’s important that we talk about our meditation practice and our experiences in meditation.  It’s not something to gossip about or to discuss lightly, and certainly not something to hold onto or reify, and for all of these reasons and more it’s sometimes discouraged.  But I think it’s going too far to wait until just the right time with just the right teacher to bring up our “dark nights” of meditation, or our powerful insight experiences.  We all have Dharma friends, and we should use them to shine careful light on what’s actually happening in our meditation.

The Japan Society in New York is sponsoring an exhibit of the Ten Oxherding Pictures from October 1st through January 16th and will be on view concurrently with the “Sound of One Hand Clapping:  Paintings and Calligraphy of Zen Master Hakuin” [described by myself earlier here]. 

The pictures and associated poems represent, especially in the Zen tradition, the stages a practitioner takes as she stumbles towards enlightenment.  The mind as represented by the Ox is fumbled after by a bumbling but budding practitioner that grows on the path as the pictures proceed.  The pictures were originally drawn by Chan master Kuoan Shiyuan during the 12th century and have been the inspiration for many modern renditions and contemporary interpretations.  

The exhibit will feature a collaboration of two internationally known artists, Max Gimblett and Lewis Hyde.  The pictures are sumi in style but largely abstract in form and shockingly loud in presentation.  While the original Ox Herding pictures relied upon the mundane images of hunting down an Ox to describe finding enlightenment, Gimblett and Hyde rely more on dramatic emotion and expression to portray the struggle of practice and the seething turbulence present in the deluded mind.  A wonderful focus and inspiring pieces of work.  For some more info on Hyde’s translations of the pictures go here. 

In addition, there will be a lecture on the 13th of October (an auspicious day for myself as it is my rebirthday) by artist Lewis Hyde and psychiatrist Mark Epstein on the interface between Buddhism and psychotherapy.  With moderator James Shaheen, Editor of Tricycle, this lecture will be an interesting one and one that I am sorry to miss.  [more details here] 

In the spirit of interpreting the pictures, the following is my own humble explanation.  From a person still searching the great plains for an elusive Ox, I think I look forward to the time when I can ride that bastard home. 

Taming of the Ox ~ Max Gimblett

In the first picture “Seeking the Ox” we are just setting foot on the spiritual path ahead of us and are blissfully unaware of what the ox is or how it can be found.  With all the horizon around us we scan constantly for anything but the resulting task can only result in frustration while still living in a world of illusion. 

In the second picture “Finding the tracks” our intrepid searcher has ceased scanning the horizon and has begun to look within.  While the ox still eludes us, we find tracks ,scat and the occasional broken twig to alert us of his presence.  I liken it to the first solemn or flippant adventure into zazen where still clueless we begin to search in the right direction. 

KATSU! The third picture “First Glimpse of the Ox” represents our first experiencial view of the Mind.  Clouds open up briefly and we see the open sky but the cloud quickly close and the ox runs back into the weeds.  Upon retrospection it could have just been a daydream or a bit of indigestion. 

The fourth picture “Catching the Ox” represents the ability to view our past thoughts and patterns of thought as delusional.  We now understand and realize the ox but the ox is still wild and unruly.  Unwilling to be grasped, the ox still stamps the ground and pulls at the tether.  The strength of the ox becomes more appearant. 

“Taming the the Ox” represents the practitioner becoming more and more at ease with his own true nature.  Practice is still not a thing of ease but the ox has become tolerant and tame to the tethers that we place upon it.  It no longer runs free in the weeds but follows us with bowed head and red eyes. 

In the 6th picture “Riding the Ox Home”, the animal is finally completely tamed.  Advanced and persistant practice has removed the need of rope and tether.  Both ox and man move together with ease but the delusion of a seperate ox and practitioner still exists. 

“Ox Forgotten, Self Alone” represents the moment where ox and practitioner become one.  With duality transcended and awareness present, the practitioner is free to continue pracitce without constant attachment to concepts and worldly things. 

In “Both Ox and Self Forgotten” no picture is represented since at this point shunyata (emptiness) is realized.  Both the searcher and the ox were realized as one but now even that conception is dropped.  This is satori.  This is liberation.  Nothing worth experiencing when everything is already experienced. 

In the 9th picture “Return to the source” we are back at the beginning but no ox, no practitioner and no active searching.  Everything is calm, fluid and impermanent.  But it doesn’t matter.  It sets the stage for a new practitioner to wander out and peer into the horizon dutifully searching for the ox. 

I like to think of the final picture, “Entering the Marketplace with Helping Hands” as a return to life.  A return to the mundane.  A lifetime of searching that can stretch years or moments all for the understanding that each moment can encapsulate all of the Ox Herding pictures.  Each moment a search, a catch and a release.  But once released we return to guide down the same path.

Newer to the online Dharma realm than many of you, I wasn’t quite prepared to hear the news of Treeleaf Sangha’s online Soto Zen priest ordination that happened last week.

Wanting to be hip and forward-looking and open-minded and not stodgy and conservative and stuck, I would like to have nothing but warm and enthusiastic regard for this historic event. I am genuinely happy for the new ordinees and wish them the very best on their path. It was hard to not be moved by the part of the video ordination I saw – very precise, orthodox, heartfelt.

But the truth is I’m not ready to embrace this level of on-line practice as the future of the lineage, and I do take issue with some of what Jundo wrote in defense of the non-traditional ordination.

Some of the more conservative folks in the Buddhist world may have trouble with that fact, and we have heard some critical voices raised about the nature and effect of the ceremony. It is surprising to me that so many Buddhist folks, though all about dropping artificial categories like “distance and space,” and who regularly invite all the ancient Buddhas and long dead Ancestors into their ceremonies, seem to reject that a ceremony of ordination can be done “long distance via the internet.”

I too hold that the Great Way has no distance and no space, but it has no birth and no death either, and certainly no priests or non-priests or anything remotely like “training” or “practice.” It has no good and evil, no killing or not killing, no skilfullness or unskillfulness. The Way itself does not have these distinction, but any kind of “path” by definition does. There is no such thing as “absolute practice.” Practice does not take place in the realm of no time and “no space” - practice and training can only be spoken of when we are speaking of time and place. Everything we “do” involves interacting with artificial categories, and there is no life apart from or beyond that. Being a priest is completely an artificial category, that is, is takes place in the realm of here and there, me and you, birth and death. It is not an ultimate condition, just as sitting zazen is not “closer” to the ultimate than anything else. We sit zazen and ordain priests because of the conventions of relative reality. “No distance and no space” doesn’t justify anything – sure it can justify a distance ordination, but it can also justify a war, a drink, a kind word, anything you want.

As for inviting the Buddhas and ancestors (or the medieval Japanese ordinations of ghosts), inviting and honoring them is one thing, but saying that they are “training” me is quite another. If someone came here claiming to have been ordained by Keizan in a dream, I would ask them how they trained when they woke up. It’s interesting, but it isn’t enough. I honor the invisible world, and have been deeply informed by it in my life and practice, but it doesn’t hit me how the visible one hits me, and the grounded ground of Zen practice is that visible, tactile contact.

I really do appreciate the effort to create paths of wholehearted practice for people without access to the warmth of a living, breathing Sangha. But being a priest is not the only way to do wholehearted practice – it is a particular condition. It seems to me that the conditions that create a priest include having a living, breathing Sangha with which you relate eye-to-eye and elbow-to-elbow. Certainly there is Zen practice without those conditions, but I question whether there can meaningfully be “priests” without them.

Wanting to extend ordination to everyone everywhere I think confuses the question of priesthood and practice. Let’s help anyone who would like to practice to find space for practice, but if someone doesn’t have access to a Sangha they can see and smell and hit against, I would not say that they have the conditions present to be a priest. That doesn’t mean that they can’t practice, and it doesn’t mean that have lower-grade practice. But it does mean that they simply lack the conditions to be priest. It’s important to me that we stay very clear that being a priest isn’t an indicator or fulfillment of the sincerity of practice, it is just a kind of practice that takes place in the presence of certain conditions. It is vital in honoring lay practice and everywhere practice, that we appreciate that. If we think that everyone needs to be able to be a priest because being a priest is the only real practice, then we’ve really gotten off track.

In truth I could equally see myself arguing the other side of this issue, because I do think opening and including is generally the way to go. And it is clear that the Treeleaf Sangha is going forward in this with the upmost integrity and carefulness. But just as the many “Zen and”s, like the National Peanut Board iPhone meditation app (thank you Austin Zen Center for bringing it my attention!), for all of their worthiness still make me want to move even closer to the heart of the tradition, so to this on-line ordination brings out my most conservative sentiments.

I think we need each other – some holding the core to enable others to branch out. Without either side, the Dharma wilts.

So I offer a deep gassho to the three new ordinees – congratulations and welcome - and a redoubled appreciation, too, for the messy and vital physicality of temple life, without which my priest training would just be an idea.