Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

Barack Obama Versus Dick Cheney

Yes, there is already a Barack Obama action figure available in Japan. And you know that the Prez beats Cheney cause the order to close Guantanamo and the CIA Black Sites has been signed. (Thanks Danny!)

Visual Headlines: Plucking the Chrysanthemum and the Black Tulip

There are many headline writing techniques to get attention. The visual headline uses either a graphic or  visual element to be both words and visual. For example, in this ad for Ikea below:

We see a floor plan that spells out the word "play," which is hopefully the attitude customers will bring to shopping at Ikea to decorate their flat. The Black Tulip Hotel in Amsterdam, which advertises specifically to the gay community used a similar technique -- the visual headline -- and in fact, a floor plan, to suggest another kind of play available for guests at the hotel:

An odd tangent is my question about the name The Black Tulip. In classical Japanese literature, the phrase, "plucking the chrysanthemum" was used to denote the taking of a young man's anal virginity. Apart from a reference to the tulipmania of the Netherlands' economic history, I wonder if the phrase "black tulip," has a similar connotation as the Japanese phrase mentioned above. Any Dutch speakers out there have any info?

Shinnen Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu: The Year of the Ox

Before we get to the year of the ox though, let's begin the year with something auspicious: the crane. Seeing a crane on New Year's Day is considered the height of good luck for the coming year. On New Year's Day in 1982, my first New Year's Day in Japan, I saw a crane fly by in Inokashira Park, on a walk with a man I'd spent the night with, and who became the man I spent the next 11 years of my life with. It was particularly meaningful, since cranes mate for life, and are considered symbols not only of good luck, but loyalty and longevity. Below is a woodblock print from Hiroshige's 100 views of Edo: cranes at at Minowa, Kanasugi.

So, it's the Year of the Ox. In both Chinese and Japanese Zen, there are a series of paintings called the Ox-Herding pictures, which are used to express the step-by-step training of the mind, the discipline of Zen that tames and harnesses the wild mind so that it becomes the energy for the vehicle to take us beyond ourselves to full Enlightenment.

Having woken up to the nature of the Ox Mind, we have to capture it, tame it and harness its energy or it will continue to work in ours lives as an unconscious element against us.

In the Chinese Zodiac, this is the year of the Earth Ox (connected to the 5 elements worldview) and means that people born in this year are successful individuals, probably because they are not only determined but highly diligent. A more modest approach combined with their reliability and sincerity makes them well liked.

One Chinese astrologer predicts that in 2009 the real estate market of United States will recover because in 5 elements theory, it's the year of earth.

So, Akemashite Omedeto Gozaimasu -- my best wishes for a New Year filled with love, light, health, prosperity and peace for all of us and all the world.

May we all wake up to the power of the Ox, tame and harness it to become one.
Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, Bodhi svaha. Ken yehi ratzon.

Yaji & Kita: The Gay Samurai Musical

Not many Americans have read the Hagakure, which is the book that became the code of the Samurai in Edo period Japan. Written in the early 18th Century, excerpts were popular during the 80s, when Japan's economic star was ascendant, giving American managers lessons in Bushido, the way of the warrior. Of course, what get left out were the queer bits. Yup, not unlike ancient Greece where a man had the responsibility of training a younger man in the arts of war, and love, so too in Japan. The Hagakure recognizes these relationships (within the larger context of family responsibility, not unlike Greece). But there was nothing like this:

Yaji and Kita: The Midnight Pilgrims is a wildlly surreal, genre busting musical road trip, somewhere between The Wizard of Oz and Kurosawa's Dreams on drugs. Lots of drugs, because KIta is a drug addict. And to heal him (and get out of town fast for reasons not revealed until late in the film) he convinces him to go on a pilgrimage to one of Japan's three great shrines, Ise.

Imagine if Brokeback Mountain had been a musical comedy. As if it had been invaded by Oklahoma. And then Blue Man Group.

So anachronisms abound, from the very start, when the two lovers leave Edo (what Tokyo was called until the late 19th Century) they jump on a motorcycle Easy Rider style, only to be hailed down by a cop for breaking dramatic narrative rules. Well. Giant babies. A local lord who requires people to make him laugh or face torture. A bar serving magic mushrooms straight out of Alice. Sword fights. Love scenes. Hip hop dance numbers. It's a very wild ride. Don't miss it.

Some Light Reading For the First Night of Hanukkah: My first Jewish-Japanese-Christmas-Hanukkah-OshogatsuTree

There are 250 million people in Japan and only 2% of them are Christian. But it seems as though all 250 million Japanese celebrate Christmas. Tokyo is filled with Santas, candy canes, and Christmas cakes.

The first December I spent in Tokyo, my Japanese boyfriend Hiroshi asked if I was going to have a Christmas tree. I explained that Jews (even Jewish Buddhists like me) didn’t have Christmas trees, and that we don’t celebrate Christmas. He was quite shocked. He knew I was Jewish, and in fact he was fascinated by this since he’d never met any Jews before. He had an idea from something he’d read that Jewish mothers and Japanese mothers were the same. He just assumed that Christmas was something all Westerners celebrated. Of course his understanding of Judaism was as limited as my understanding of Shinto. Not to mention my confusion at the fact that every Japanese considers themselves both Buddhist and Shinto — and that they see no contradiction. Not that a Jewish Buddhist like me can complain about that.

Anyway, Hiroshi thought all Americans celebrated Christmas, and now that he had an American boyfriend, he really wanted a tree, despite the fact that neither of us was Christian.

The Japanese do have year end custom that seemed similar — on New Years Day, the Japanese put pine branches, plum branches and bamboo saplings together just outside the entrance to the house, to welcome good luck into the house for the new year.

He felt that if we put Christmas and Japanese New Years together in a tree, it would be a yearly ritual for our relationship. The idea of a Christmas tree just didn’t seem right to me, but I wanted him to be happy.

So I called my friend Andrew Ramer back in the U.S. and told him my dilemma. And he told me what Rabbi Miriam Da Silva had to say on the subject....

It seems that a young couple had gone to Rabbi Da Silva for counseling. Their daughter wanted a Christmas Tree. Now their daughter was a Jewish day school student, who took her heritage seriously. But for some reason the child insisted they have a tree.

The rabbi listened and thought about Purim, whose heroes, Mordechai and Esther are clearly taken from the Mesopotamian Pagan gods Marduk and Ishtar. And she thought about the quintessentially Jewish ceremony, the Passover Seder, which was modeled on an ancient Greeks ritual, the Symposium — which is a banquet centered around a topic of discussion. Not that the Maccabees, intolerantly murderous fundamentalist fanatics that they were, would want to know this. But the Rabbi didn’t have an answer, so she asked the couple to wait while she sought guidance on the matter.

And that night the Rabbi had a dream. In the dream, a fiery angel of god came to her and said,

“Miriam, Miriam. Remember when Moses saw a bush all aflame. This came at a dark time in history, when the Jews were slaves, just as the Solstice is the darkest time of year. The tree this child longs for is a symbol of that burning bush. Tell them that. Tell them that their tree will commemorate this sacred time — but that it must be grown for only this purpose. They may not cut down a tree in the woods. And it must be mulched or recycled at the end of the season. The tree must not be taller than the tallest person in the family. They may decorate it with colored lights, but no more than ten, to remind them of the tree of life and its sephirot. And they must not use tinsel, even if it is biodegradable. They must never wear shoes around the tree. And for the eight nights it is up, they must sit around it and read and discuss the passage from Exodus about Moses and the burning bush. Tell them if they do these things in just this way their tree will be kosher, a sacred reminder of the Presence of God in the world and in nature, which must be honored and preserved, for it is God’s holy creation. “

When the Rabbi awoke, she wrote down the words she remembered and told the parents of the girl. And she said that Jews unconsciously honor the sacred revelation of nature every time they plant a tree in Israel, At least that’s what my friend Andrew Ramer told me that Rabbi Da Silva said. It gave me permission.

Okay, I’m sure you know the song from A Chorus Line — What I Did for Love. I went out to the nearest florist and rather than buy pine branches, I bought a potted pine tree, one that could keep growing, so we could keep it on the terrace throughout the year.  We decorated so that it glinted with 10 gold foil wrapped chocolate Hanukkah coins. So, no, the foil wasn’t biodegradeable. At the top we put a gold star of David, which oddly enough also happens to be a Shinto symbol.

That first year, Hiroshi also put a little statue of the boddhisatva of wisdom, Fukurokuju, at the foot of the tree. He said it would be okay, because he looked like Moses — carrying a staff and a scroll.

It was a funny looking statue, a smiling old man with a, long white beard and a bald domed head that stretched up like a zucchini to emphasize his intelligence. It was only after I’d spend a few years in Japan that I learned in earlier times the statues were made in graduated sizes and used to initiate the boy acolytes of the Buddhist priests. Yes, it’s the sacred dildo you can see to the right!

That is my coming out story as a Queer neo-pagan Shinto Buddhist Jew with a Christmas-Hanukkah-Oshogatsu tree. I just hope there aren’t any Maccabbees reading this blog. The photo above of Hiroshi and me in front of one of our trees was taken after we moved to New York — around 1990 — and when the decorations had become even more, uhhh, eclectic.

Meanwhile, my wish for you, my dear readers, is that this Hanukkah and all year round your life is filled with light to share with those you love — and all beings. To quote the Buddhist teacher Ajahn Sumedho:

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”

Share your light.

The Bamboo Sukkah

Up to the NY Botanical Garden today with friends Lou & Danyal to see the Henry Moore sculptures on a glorious autumn day. So glorious that the roses were still in wild profusion in the rose garden. The sculptures were fun, for a bit, but a little Moore goes a long way.

What got me, no surprise, was the exhibit of chrysanthemums, done in cooperation with Shinjuku Gyoen. The amazing blooms trained in rows like so many Japanese schoolchildren was a flashback to my autumn days in Tokyo. And then we saw the Sogetsu Sukkah. No, it isn't really a sukkah. But many Sogetsu ikebana masters like to make large arrangements with bamboo. The last head of the school, the late Hiroshi Teshigahara (also film director, whose Woman in the Dunes was an existentialist masterpiece) loved to make large, sculptural arrangements with bamboo. And this one, by Tetsunori Kawana, is clearly in that tradition. Standing under the tangle of a roof, held up by simple poles, I realized you could see just enough sky for this roof to be right for a sukkah. All the installation needed were bamboo blinds hung on the sides to serve as walls. And maybe tatami mats for dinner on the floor.

Jubu Review: A response to the Venerable Shravasti Dhammika

A few months back, Shravasti Dhammika, a Buddhist monk of 32 years practice and the spiritual advisor to the Buddha Dhamma Mandala Society in Singapore, added a post to his blog on the subject of hyphenated Buddhists in general, and Jewish-Buddhists in particular.  The good monk wrote that whole idea of hyphenated Buddhists gives him an “identity crisis,” which is a pretty funny thing for him to say, given that an identity is about as insubstantial as it gets in Buddhism. I suspect he was winking when he wrote this, since his sense of humor is on display throughout this posting. After all, mistaking the skandhas for a self would be a shande. 

Nevertheless, the question of hyphenated Buddhists, and Jewish Buddhism or Buddhist Judaism in particular disturbed him. And it’s a question that that often comes up in my world, since I identify myself as a  Jewish Buddhist. I am hardly alone on this path, since it’s been estimated that 30% of American born Buddhists also identify in some way as Jewish. That’s enough people to become a market! And so,, no surprise, there are quite a number of books, films and t-shirts (blending spiritual path, identity and fashion with Western consumerism) on the phenomenon. The venerable Dhammika refers to some books by an IMC teacher I admire, Sylvia Boorstein, in particular. I don’t think she would define herself as a Jubu — her excellent essay in Beside Still Waters, an anthology of writings by Jews and Christians who have been profoundly changed by their Buddhist practice is her response to the question of hyphenated identity and I recommend it. This is my response to the venerable Dhammika’s post where he writes:

“Is it possible to be a practicing Jew and a practicing Buddhist at the same time? No it is not! The two are mutually incompatible. A Buddhist would have to see most of the practices of Orthodox and even Reformed Judaism as harmless but empty rituals that contributed nothing to the development of virtue or the freeing of the mind. If anything, they reinforce a specific identity; the very thing Buddhism seeks to transcend. The Torah’s unambiguous demand for total allegiance to the God of Israel and the Buddha’s God-free spirituality and world view, separate the two religions from the word go.”

I take issue with a number of things he writes here. Just as I take issue with Rabbi Akiva Tatz, who wrote a book called Letters to a Buddhist Jew, that I will write about in another post. However, what both gentlemen have in common is a lack or experience or deep knowledge of each other’s path, so that neither man has enough of an understanding of the other’s path to make a full judgment or fair assessment.

Today though, I’m sticking to the venerable Dhammika’s comments. So let’s start with his contention that the Torah demands “total allegiance to the God of Israel.”

I’m not sure what his concept of that God is, but I have to respond with the words of Rabbi Irwin Kula: “I don’t believe in the God you don’t believe in either.”

The word God itself is problematic. People tend to think of a character, a personage, a being with a personality, and for that matter, a gender. Thinking about god this way is basically a violation of one of the commandments — against idolatry, which isn’t restricted to making physical images. In Judaism one cannot speak the name of the Divine because to name something is to limit it, to have control over it, and the Divine is beyond language or limit.

One of the central Jewish prayers, said several times during services, is the Kaddish. The point of the Kaddish is to break through the tendency of the mind to reify God. Rather than being an empty ritual, it is a prayer designed to break through any definition of what is essentially beyond the limited power of language to express and thus help open the one praying to an experience of the unconditioned state. If one recites it rote, without consciousness, it is no different from simply reciting the sutras without mindfulness. Or for that matter reciting a sutra as a mantra in the hopes of getting a new car (Can you say Sokka Gakkai?).

The Kaddish is a deep teaching about the nature of the Divine, which in the Jewish mystical tradition is sometimes referred to as the Ayn Sof: infinite no-thing-ness. It is beyond form and formlessness. This is not the same thing as Nirvana (or is it?), though I can’t rightly say, never having experienced it. For that matter, it is an experience, from all I can gather, than can only be expressed by what it is not (which is expressed beautifully in the medieval work of Christian mysticism, The Cloud of Unknowing). This is the place where language breaks down. So while I can’t say with any authority that these concepts are equivalent, I have a sense that they arise from the same place (or no-place as the case may be).

I remember when I had walked away from Judaism entirely, and had given myself over to meditation practice and the study of the sutras and the various commentaries. My friend Marion asked me what I had found in Buddhism that I hadn’t found in Judaism. I read her some passages and spoke to her about what meditation had given me. She opened up a siddur — the book of Jewish prayer — and pointed to some passages that went to the heart of what I was talking about. In fact, several of these prayers were mindfulness practices — they weren’t something so much to be read as instructions to a practice of awareness. I was dumbfounded, since I had never recognized this before. Like the venerable Dhammika, I saw the liturgy as empty ritual. But of course, no rabbi in my youth had ever taught these prayers as an awareness and mindfulness practice. I wasn’t even sure there were rabbis who understood these prayers in that way.

Of course, that was my ignorance of my own tradition. And the fact that no rabbis in my youth taught in this was was a result of the history of post-enlightenment Judaism in the U.S. and the broken lineage of deep teachers in the last century — . I knew nothing of masters like Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, who taught a meditation technique that reads like a text on Vipassana, and who was murdered in the Holocaust.

When I delved deeper into the tradition of my ancestors I discovered many texts I would never have understood but for my experience with Buddhist meditation. And I met rabbis who not only understood the practices these prayers called for, they actively taught them.

As for a hairy thunderer in the sky demanding total allegiance — well, that’s just a story. A teaching story. I don’t imagine that the venerable Dhammika literally believes all of the Jataka tales. And I doubt he believes in a literal being called Mara. These tales are told to point to a deeper truth.

I can’t deny that Judaism, like Shinto, carries the mythic history and consciousness of a particular people from a particular time. The Torah, like the Kojiki, are the stories that encode the deepest teaching of the tradition. Taking it literally is about as delusionary as believing that the Japanese emperor is a direct descendent of the sun goddess, Amaterasu. Ahem, well. Obviously many Japanese did believe this well into the last century — the Venerable Dhammika neglected to ask the same question about hyphenated Buddhists to the entire Japanese nation, whose population pretty much considers itself both Buddhist and Shinto. But as always, I digress…

The problems arise when people take the stories literally — it’s what leads to kamikaze pilots, the suicide bombers of WWII, not to mention murderous zealots like Baruch Goldstein. Or lunatics like Fred Phelps. I stray again…

Getting back to the empty prayers and rituals…perhaps the most important prayer in Judaism is the Shema – which, rather than being a demand for total allegiance is a radical statement that calls one’s full attention to the unity of reality.

While my interpretation of the prayer may sound unorthodox to many who grew up with the English translation that appears across from the Hebrew in the siddur, it is actually within the realm of orthodoxy (which is not usually where I find myself):

Listen/Be mindful, you who wrestle with the Inexpressible, the Inexpressible is Greater/Beyond Anything you can imagine, and it is Indivisible from Reality - there is nothing that is separate or not a part of It (including you and your struggle).

The Hebrew is a lot shorter, but it’s a language of great economy that manages to express a non-dual experience of the Divine that is both transcendent and immanent simultaneously.

Now certainly there are places where Judaism and Buddhism clearly part ways. There is no monastic tradition (that has survived, i.e. the Essenes) in Judaism. While Buddhism sees the way out of suffering through equanimity, Judaism calls for passionate engagement with all of life — experiencing joy and suffering as the fullness that is human existence. While Buddhist monks don’t marry, don’t work and don’t own anything, historically rabbis have been expected to marry, work and provide for their families. This is where the paths diverge for those who wish to practice, not simply as laymen (ah, the innate sexism and limits of language), but as complete devotees.

By our very nature as humans, we cannot see or express the whole truth. Each of our traditions displays merely one facet of the jewel of Reality. Each does it’s best to give its adherents a practice that will enable them to see this and apprehend an experience beyond the limits of expression.  And each has practices that can be bizarre and counterproductive to the goal — how could it be otherwise, given their long history and the addition of any number of adopted teachings and offshoot branches.

The rabbi of  Congregation Har HaShem in Boulder, in his blog notes an beautifully strange similarlity between the writings of the Soto Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki and the 18th century Chassidic rabbi, Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev. This great master wrote that:

“we are holy in that we can become aware of our essential nothingness – 'Know that you come from nothing' – and that Jewish practice (mitzvoth) raise our consciousness of the nothingness underlying our existence, and the transitory nature of our materiality.”

At this point you would be excused if you quoted Shakespeare and said of me, “I think the lady doth protest too much.”

Yes there are differences, and there are practices in each tradition that would be anathema to the other. I do my best to live fully in the real contradictions while celebrating the ultimate oneness. Duality is real. I live in it every day. There’s just a greater reality. And the teachings of both traditions create a feedback loop that helps take me deeper to a place that transcends both.

Rabbi Arthur Green, in Tormented Master, his biography of the Chassidic master, Rabbi Nachman, related this conversation between the rabbi and a close disciple. R. Nachman explained that he really no longer needed to follow many of the commandments. Because in following the path of mitzvoth, of living in blessing, he had “reached the other shore” and no longer needed the vehicle of the form. But he continued to follow these practices because he had followers — and if he kept up the practice his followers would be inspired to continue, despite the difficulties of the path, and could someday reach the far shore themselves. Sounds like a boddhisatva vow to me.

I’m grateful to the venerable Dhammika — his words gave me an opening to write about all this in more depth than usual and possibly open a dialog.  And I am grateful to my teachers in both traditions: their words and their living examples have been a blessing in my life.

One more parenthetical — a postscript: here is a question/koan to consider on the dual path from this Jewish Buddhist — to go with the collection of Jewish Buddhist haiku that gets sent around by email endlessly (and believe me I’ve seen it many times, so please stop sending it to me!):
Mu. Nu?

Get a heart-on

Back in 1981 when I was hired to work as a copywriter in Tokyo there was a story about the writer I replaced. He was a bit of a wild man, and he had written a headline for Dai-Ichi Kangyo, a Japanese bank that has since been merged out of existence.

DKB wanted to portray itself as a friendly institution. Its Japanese slogan was  "The Bank with a Heart." And its logo was a heart. Awww.

Well it seems that when the time came for DKB to run an ad in the local English language papers, this writer was assigned the job. And his headline read: Dai-Ichi Kangyo has a heart on for you.

And of course, none of the Japanese understood the joke. Until the letters started coming in after the ad ran. Which is one reason why there was a writer’s position open for me to take.

Of course, the Japanese continue to do this to themselves. There are lots of blogs and websites devoted to Janglish — a marvelous phrase that captures the jarring shock so many of these phrases cause native English speakers.

And so I wanted to share this latest little bit that seems in keeping with the old DKB debacle. Here is a photo of a store that sells used computer hardware. It may well be a cousin of the used bookstore known as Book-Off (one of which is on East 41st Street in Manhattan, midtown’s own little Tokyo). One can save money by purchasing used, and thus getting a percentage off the original price — thus Book-Off. And for used electronic hardware, well of course, Hard-Off. I suppose when the chain decides to sell anything and everything used, they will simply call it Get-Off.

Getting back to “heart-on” though, this is a phrase I like. It suggests more than simply a response below the belt. Except that like the response below the belt that seems to happen independently of intelligence, a “heart-on” could simply be a crush or romantic obsession. I’m not sure which is the best use for this neologism, but I’m all for seeing its use become widespread.

Thoughts for a Jewish-Buddhist Purim

Ah Purim. It’s developed, at least in the U.S. into Jewish Mardi Gras: a wild holiday of costumes and drinking to excess. And of course, the telling of the great folk tale of Esther and the King of Persia.

So what is it about drinking so much that you can’t tell the difference between Haman’s curse and Mordechai’s blessing? It reminds me of the custom in Japan at Bonenkai parties — year end celebrations where office workers go out together and drink even more than they do during the year — and where they are given free reign to speak any of their pent up frustrations and hostilities. It is the one day of the year where it is permitted to drop the mask. The next day all is forgotten and forgiven. At least that’s the stated custom in Japan.

At Purim, the alcoholic haze also frees people from their inhibitions. But wearing a mask can also free someone who believes they aren’t recognized — here we aren’t dropping a mask and telling the truth, but wearing a mask to do so.

But if this is the day we are allowed to lose a certain measure of control, the story of Esther tells us what happens when the one man who is supposed to be in control, the king, isn’t in control of his own appetites.

King Ahasuerus was ruled by his lust. And when his wife Vashti refused to obey his desire to display her beauty to his attendants, he divorced her. He chose his next wife, Esther entirely based on her looks. Here the king is ruled by his eyes. This is a king who isn’t in control of himself — what does this mean for his kingdom? (You might be tempted to think this question relates to recent political events in NYC, but one can look at leaders in every time and place and see this very failing — leading back to the same question about control of others and self control)

Kabbalistically speaking, the sefira of Malchut, means both kingship and sovereignty. And this conjunction of meaning is important, because sovereignty means not only a ruler, but a kind of independence that comes with knowing how to rule oneself. King Ahasuerus didn’t have that. And both the Jews and the Buddhists agree on that the ability to rule one’s self is required to rule others.

In the Pirke Avot it is written:

Ben Zoma said…
Who is a strong leader?
One who conquers his passions and emotions

In the Dhammapada it is written:

Though thousand times a thousand
in battle one may conquer,
yet should one conquer just oneself
one is the greatest conqueror.

How can we best know ourselves? There are some who say in vino veritas. But using alcohol as an excuse to speak what you’re afraid of saying to others is cowardice. However if in letting down your inhibitions you discover you’ve got just as much lust in your heart (to use a phrase from President Carter) as King Ahasuerus, then you have learned something about yourself. You have to know your passions and emotions if you’re going to deal with them. That doesn’t mean acting them out, which alcohol can lead to.

Please don’t get the idea that I’m against alcohol. I am against its abuse. People used the same argument for using LSD — it was a tool of self-exploration. And for some it was. But it’s a dangerous tool that did damage to many.

The injunction to drink so much that we don’t know the difference between Haman’s curse and Mordechai’s blessing I take as the commandment to see that within me I carry both inclinations. I am no saint — but neither am I a devil. Both these men live in me. And when I can see both of them clearly, I can choose true action rather than blindly reacting to unconscious urges.

So put on your mask tonight. Down a glass of wine. Drop your guard.  See what you’re hiding from others — and yourself. Will we take this knowledge to engage the shadow or believe that by putting the stopper back on the bottle the genie is under control?

Does lust rule you? If you live white-knuckling to keep yourself under control, do you need a night like Purim to let go? Can you rule yourself with compassion and not as a puritan? Can the shadow be unmasked so that its energy can be used in service of the Whole? These are my questions this Purim. What are yours?

Zen and the art of advertising real estate in New York

So there I was just coming from the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art (outside of which Wim Hof was sitting in a tub of ice to demonstrate the powers of Tibetan tantric practices to regulate body temperature — and that's a whole other story) when I turned onto 7th Avenue and found myself staring up at this billboard:

I stood there and wondered how the meaning would be changed if it read "impeccably Christian." But then I realized that Zen is a sect (of which there are several sub sects) in Japanese Buddhism. So I wondered how the meaning would be changed if the billboard read "impeccably Presbyterian"  or something like that.

The Japanese character for the word Zen, 禪, means meditation in one of its readings. It can also be read as Shizuka, which means quiet. The word itself came from China, where it was pronounced Chán, which was in itself a Chinese pronunciation of the Sanskrit (and possibly Pali) Dhyana, which was a word used to describe highly advanced states of meditative concentration, of which 7 were recognized. What any of this would have to do with a luxury condo in Chelsea I have no idea.

Certainly the Zen monks who take vows of poverty could not afford (and would not be allowed to "own") a condo in Chelsea, or anywhere for that matter. Of course, few people who buy a condo in Chelsea can actually afford it, and I suppose the real owner is the mortgage lender (which may find itself with a lot more real estate on its hands as the economy spirals down). So perhaps that is the hidden meaning of this billboard — we don't really own anything.

Of course, I realize this headline is meant to refer to the Zen aesthetic. Okay, so just what does that mean? I ask simply because the this very real aesthetic sense has been ripped from its context and used to sell a product. And while some Americans have a vague sense of what a Zen aesthetic looks like I can bet you dollars to onigiri that most haven't a clue what it means.

The title of this post is a reference to one of the best selling books of 1970s, Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This book was one of the more successful routes for Zen to enter the popular consciousness in this country. And in this way Zen became indelibly connected to quality in workmanship among other things. Certainly it helped that at the time Japan. after years of being the butt of jokes about quality, was kicking US butt in automotive quality. So dedication to quality has become part of the meaning of Zen in our culture.

In Japan, the Zen aesthetic certainly has a connection to the highest quality craftsmanship.  But first and foremost it is about simplicity — doing things in a basic and plain manner to connect with what is the essence of the work. Another way of thinking about this is by looking at the Japanese word for tool - dogu. The "do" in the word means "way" or "path" and is the same character used in "dojo" which is where one practices the path of the martial artist. Dogu is the way of the tool — and speaks to the path of craftsmanship, how using a tool with mindfulness is a path towards enlightenment.

This is very far from a condo in Chelsea. Or the world of New York real estate. Though one would hope that the minimalist decor that passes for luxury in such a condo is at least an expression of the highest craftsmanship available. One would hope. 

There is also the concept of Sunyata in Zen — emptiness. And it is true if you walk into a loft apartment that is what you will experience. Empty space and if you're buying, an empty bank account. But that isn't the kind of emptiness that Zen is about. This is about the insubstantial nature of self. That in fact there is no self, no thing to hold on to. And that with this realization one connects with Buddha nature.

All right, I confess. I want at large loft apartment in Chelsea. In that way I am empty, or at least shallow. Desire has me. Or to paraphrase Jimmy Carter, there is real estate lust in my heart.

Yes, clearly this billboard was impeccably Zen. It brought me to another awareness of my aversion and desire. Probably not what the copywriter intended, but then as any good storyteller will tell you, the story one tells is never the story your audience hears.