Madhuri

Zen itself is stylishly, elegantly irreverent. And this book is the most irreverent Zen commentary I’ve ever come across.

The author is a retired Amsterdam policeman and Zen student, and a prolific writer of detective novels and nonfiction. This is the 3rd volume in a trilogy about his Zen studies. He now lives on the coast of Maine.

Childhood trauma in WWII Holland eventually drove him into the cool arms of Zen. His first Roshi, in Kyoto, he loved and admired; his most recent one, in the States, he didn’t like at all. He pulls out all the stops in describing the various monasteries and schools he’s been involved in: apparently a great many Roshis drive Rolls Royces, get falling-down drunk, and sleep with their students. (One young disciple gift-wrapped herself and had herself wheeled into the Roshi’s living room in a shopping cart pushed by two bikini-clad girlfriends. Even in Japan, it seems, girls write love-notes, tie them around rocks, and hurl the rocks over monastery walls into Zen gardens.) The whole book is like that – cheerfully cynical, funny, startling – but it’s also wrapped around a central theme: koans. The author describes his own travails with them, and the travails of students he meets and spends time with.

The writing is excellent – clear, risk-taking, and grown-up (laddishness notwithstanding). This is not the story of someone’s enlightenment, but of someone’s finally letting go of the rigours of the search.

A few quotes:

“Zen monks who have gotten into trouble… when they leave the Sangha, the Buddhist uniformed brotherhood, altogether, they usually do well at whatever comes with their next occupation. Putting up with painful and maddening meditations, thankless work in vegetable gardens, humility toward power-mad superiors, and going without often brings about a dauntless spirit that keeps going in the face of adversity.”

“Perhaps no good teacher is concerned with the personality of his disciple. The master’s intention is to get the self-centred sluggard to finally give up on showing off his masks.”

“I swear Roshi was amused, when, coming home late from a party that celebrated the end of a meditation week, I crashed through the head monk’s bedroom with my muddy boots on, destroyed his front and back walls of paper glued on latticework by walking through them, stumbled over his body, and kicked the glass he kept his teeth in. I heard that the head monk, the next day, made a serious effort to rid the temple of my presence, but Roshi just laughed. Han-san’s comment was to say that Roshi was using me as a grinding-stone to smooth the head monk’s spirit.”

For me, this was an excellent book – the koans and their intrinsic emptiness light it up from within, and the funny and outrageous doings and conversations keep all piousness utterly at bay. Enjoyable and full of surprises.

At the end of the book are 21 koans the author grappled with. The final koan:

“A monk enquired, ‘What is the meaning of Daruma going out to preach Buddhism to the Chinese?’ The abbot was silent. Another monk asked another teacher, ‘What was the meaning of the abbot being silent?’ ‘Maybe he didn’t know,’ the other teacher said.”