Hardcore Heart Sutra; Pop Buddha

Are there days when chanting the same old thing gets tiring and old? Do you find yourself just going through the motions – droning on and on? Well, if you need an electric jumpstart to your stale Zen routine, may I recommend one of these “Theme-based Heart Sutra” versions? In pop, hardcore, ballad and metal varieties – they are sure to add some color to any Dharma outfit. Infuse a dollop of excitement into your day now. Svaha!

POP! So cute, oh my!

HARDCORE! So scary, we die!

BALLAD! The tears, they come.

METAL! Come get some.

Contemplation of Sutra as Practice ~ Jiken Anderson

Or “When you need a crowbar, use a crowbar.”

Thus have I heard—in some corners of the English-speaking Zen world: 

Study of the sutras is an obstacle to practice.  “Dogen said just sit,” it has been said, “so just sit.”   Our transmission is outside the sutras, not about letters or words.  And we know perfectly well what this means, right?

I do not know if this resistance to study and thought (and, concomitantly, to ritual) represents a traditional tendency in Japanese Zen or even a coherent reading of Dogen, or is a reflection of an uncritical embrace of the rhetoric of the Patriarchs of the ninth century, who rightly rejected the hegemonic and constipated piety of their own moment as counterproductive. 

I do know that we do things differently in the milieu of Tendai Buddhism among English-speakers.  And I have reason to think that a Tendai approach to practice and to the teachings offers a sensible, workable third path between two untenable positions: a nihilistic rejection of the sutras as Asian Puff from the Ancient Past Irrelevant to Us on one side; an eternalistic, uncritical, or fundamentalist veneration of the sutras as the Summum Bonum of the One True Faith and Mystical Wisdom Heritage on the other side. 

To get at what I am proposing, you need to have a handle on two interrelated concepts:  that of upaya or skillful means, and that of Buddha-garbha, or enlightened nature.  These are treated together in the Lotus Sutra, which is the central text of the Tendai tradition.  Buddha-garbha means that all beings, even you, have the potential to attain enlightenment and, further, will inevitably do so; upaya means that all the actions of the Buddhas, including the recorded texts of the sutras, are moments in which enlightened mind reaches out and meets deluded beings where they are, with whatever tool, trick, or gimmick is necessary. 

“Gimmick” is not too strong a word for this method:  in chapter four of the Lotus Sutra, for instance, we see an analogy made between the teaching situation of the Buddha and the disciple to that of an employer (hilariously in my view) tricking a man into shoveling shit for decades in order for him to feel better about himself and, ultimately, attain something that was already his from the start.  One might say upaya is about mitigating stupidity, specifically the stupidity of deluded beings who do not see their own inherent dignity and divinity, the stupidity of avoidance.  Upaya is the means by which Buddha-garbha is realized; Buddha-garbha is the rationale for upaya. 

Buddha Shakyamuni is credited in the Lotus Sutra (chapter two this time) with coming on out and describing this situational pedagogy:

“The Tathagathas save all living beings
With innumerable expedients.
The cause all living beings to enter the Way
To the wisdom-without-asravas of the Buddha.
Anyone who hears the Dharma
Will not fail to become a Buddha.
Every Buddha vows at the outset:

‘I will cause all beings
To attain the same enlightenment
That I attained.’

The future Buddhas will expound many thousands
Of Myriads of millions of teachings
For just one purpose,
That is, for the purpose of revealing the One Vehicle.”  Lotus Sutra p. 43.

And the One Vehicle, or Ekayana, is the Buddha-Vehicle (Buddha-yana):  the doctrine that all beings, here described as those who hears the Dharma, inherently have the potential to Buddhahood, with no exceptions, and that Buddhist practice amounts to eliminating defilements and drawing forth or manifesting from oneself enlightened qualities.  This is about the Buddha within. 

The purpose of the written Teaching is to give a pointer or, if you like, to create a situation or context in which one might have some insight into this.  It is a poke, a prod.  Brook Ziporyn describes it as being like the punchline to a joke:  first a context is established, and then undercut with a surprise that transforms the context.  The transmission is not in or of the words anymore than the laughter a good joke provokes is identical to the words of the joke.  This is not about making meaning, or having a meaningful life; this is not a semiotic or semantic game.  It is, in short, about practice.

There is a way in which the question of whether the claims made in sutras are objectively true or false is irrelevant.  Consider the hyperbole:  does it really matter how many kotis of nayutas of kalpas passed before the sky stopped spontaneously showering mandarava blossoms?  Only to such a one who seeks to understand Stravinsky or Bartok by measuring the mass and volume of a symphonic score.  No:  the written text is itself a series of upaya, or gimmicks, just as a piece of music is constructed serially to kick you here, caress you there, and achieve (if successful) a particular affective impact on the observer. 

Can the orchestration Stravinsky devised for the Rite of Spring be proven true or false?  No, but it can be understood nonverbally, transmitted outside the “words” or notes, if taken on its own terms and in an appreciative attitude.  This means stop jibbering your overconfident jabber and listen to the music, open up to it, let it work on you.   Another analogy:  if you are trapped in a cage, and someone offers you a crowbar with which to work your way out, does it matter if the crowbar is “true” or “false”?

The rest of the prescribed practices in post-Ekayana Buddhism, inclusive of Japanese Zen streams, are also upaya.  There is nothing singularly special about the effective but arbitrary practice of sitting on a zafu staring at a wall until your hips heroically turn arthritic.  That, too, is a device, something that works in a particular way under particular conditions.  Chanting?  A device.  Walking in the woods with an open heart?  The same, and just as authentic.  In short, quit worrying and contemplate the teaching in a meditative spirit, just the same as washing the dishes or shoveling the shit.  In all seriousness, why not?  Who are you to avoid the dirty work? 

This is the truth, not a lie:  this literature reaches people because it directs attention to a fundamental reality of our situation, in any situation.  With an open mind, you may also get in on it.  Namo Buddhaya!

“Those who do not study the Dharma
Cannot understand it.
You have already realized

The fact that the Buddhas, the World-Teachers, employ expedients,
According to the capacities of all living beings.
Know that, when you remove your doubts,
And when you have great joy,
You will become Buddhas!”
Lotus Sutra, pp. 49-50

Works Cited and Suggested

• Murano, Senchu (trans).  The Lotus Sutra.  Tokyo, Japan:  Nichiren Shu Shimbun, 1974.
• Ng Yu-Kwan.  T’ien-t’ai Buddhism and Early Madhyamika.  Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press:  1993.
• Swanson, Paul L.  Foundations of T’ien-T’ai Philosophy.  Berkeley, CA:  Asian Humanities Press, 1989.
• Ziporyn, Brook.  Being and Ambiguity: Philosophical Experiments with Tiantai Buddhism.  Chicago, IL: Open Court Publications, 2004.

Other Upaya:

• Tendai Buddhist Institute 
  California Tendai Monastery  
  Tendai Buddhism in Europe 

Jikan Anderson leads the Great River Ekayana Sangha in Arlington, Virginia.  Find more of his material at DC tendai. Follow him on twitter under the handle @JikanAnderson.

Smokey the Bear Sutra ~ Gary Snyder Bodhisattva

*Fuck, Gary.  You blow my mind sometimes…hard.  This is, with no hesitation, the coolest thing I have ever read*

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago,
the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite
Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements
and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings,
the flying beings, and the sitting beings — even grasses,
to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a
seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning
Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

“In some future time, there will be a continent called
America. It will have great centers of power called
such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur,
Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels
such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon
The human race in that era will get into troubles all over
its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of
its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature.”

“The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings
of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth.
My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and
granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that
future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure
the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger:
and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it.”

And he showed himself in his true form of

SMOKEY THE BEAR

A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and watchful.

Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;

His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display — indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;

Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a civilization that claims to save but often destroys;

Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the West, symbolic of the forces that guard the Wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the True Path of man on earth: all true paths lead through mountains —

With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;

Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her;

Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs; smashing the worms of capitalism and totalitarianism;

Indicating the Task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses, canned foods, universities, and shoes;master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down the rotten trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover trash.

Wrathful but Calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or slander him,

HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.

Thus his great Mantra:

Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana
Sphataya hum traka ham nam

“I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND
BE THIS RAGING FURY DESTROYED”

And he will protect those who love woods and rivers,
Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick
people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:

And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television,
or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR’S WAR SPELL:

DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out with his vajra-shovel.

Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada.

Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.

Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.

Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.

Will always have ripe blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.

AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT.

thus have we heard.

(may be reproduced free forever)

Illusory flowers in an empty sky

See the full gallery on Posterous

Virtuous man, all illusory projections of sentient beings arise from the wondrous mind of the Tathagata’s Complete Enlightenment, just like flowers in the sky which come into existence from out of the sky. When the illusory flower vanishes, the nature of the sky is not marred. Likewise, the illusory mind of sentient beings relies on illusory [cultivation] for its extinction. When all illusions are extinguished, the enlightenen mind remains unmoved. Speaking of enlightenment in contrast to illusion is itself an illusion. To say that enlightenment exists is to not have left illusion yet. [However], to say that enlightenment does not exist is also no different. Therefore, the extinction of illusion is called the unmoving [mind of enlightenment].

Virtuous man, for example, because of an illusory illness [of the eye], a flower is falsely seen in an empty sky. When the illusory illness [of the eye] is eliminated, one does not say: ‘Now that this illness is eliminated, when will other illnesses arise?’ Why? Because the illness and the flower are not in opposition. Likewise, when the flower vanishes into the empty sky, one does not say: ‘When will flowers appear in the sky again?’ Why? Because the sky originally has no flowers! There is no such thing as appearing and vanishing. Birth and death and nirvana are like the appearing and vanishing [flowers in the sky], while the perfect illumination of wondrous enlightenment is free from flowers or illnesses.

from the Sutra of Complete Enlightenment

The photos are of smoke from a prescribed burn in the Black Hills mingling with the clouds at sunset yesterday.  Beautiful, illusory flowers in an empty sky.