Impeccably Zen

On my way to sit zazen this evening at the Still Mind Zendo, I passed a billboard (see above) from Corcoran which suggests you buy their product because apparently the product is "Impeccably Zen." 

The billboard is on 7th Avenue and 17th St. Still Mind Zendo is on 17th St. Between 5th and 6th Avenue. 

Two Zens. One original undivided way. 

New York, New York.

The Zen of Jacques Derrida

Zen and the gesture of deconstruction are complimentary. In my imagination, I can see Dogen and Derrida getting along smartly over tea. 

Zen and deconstruction are both nondual systems of inquiry. Their objective is to render strange that which we took to be familiar. This is accomplished by reading things against their own grain. 

For example, a deconstructive/Zen approach might say that, ironically, the truly religious person is comfortable using an atheistic mind. 

The mind which works from “great doubt” paradoxically reveals “great faith” because “absolute reality” is “beyond” our egoic notions of “being.” So instead of falling back on our ideas of reference (as "believers" do) we have to let go into the uncomfortable and intimate space of “not knowing.”

This is the practice of Zen. Or, more specifically, this is zazen.

The zazen way is to look beyond ideas of belief. The only way past ideas is through direct encounter of the mind which makes ideas. Through direct confrontation with the dualistic “believing mind,” the Zen student challenges the ideas of a Self which is always present. 

This looking reveals a humbling insight: just as Metaphysics is just another attachment to the craving for “good things,” belief in the idea of an unchanging Reality is heretical. 

Perhaps this is why the Buddha taught: “No Soul.” Clinging to the idea of a total presence is just desire run amok. In other words, it’s suffering. 

Everything changes. Nothing stays the same. 

To use Derrida’s lovely language: presence is always “divided, differed, and different from itself...” 

Acceptance beyond acceptance is therefore needed. We need a rapport and a rapprochement with the discomfort of our lived moments.

This is the way of the mystic.

Returning to the Ordinary World

A koan:

A monk asked Kegon, "How does an enlightened one return to the ordinary world?" Kegon replied, "A broken mirror never reflects again; fallen flowers never go back to the old branches."

While I'm certainly not claiming enlightenment, my travels in the East are coming to a close. I'm returning to America in a few days. I'll be resuming the training at the San Francisco Zen Center.

But first I'll be visiting New York. Back to the city I called home for 28 years.

Back to the ordinary world.

In the Chinese Zen collection Wu men Kuan, Chao-Chou asked Nan-Ch'uan: "What is the Way?"

Nan-Ch'uan answered: "Ordinary mind is the Way."

Japanese Zen Master Bankei maintained that the enlightened "Unborn Mind" which is the holy grail of every meditator is, in fact, just our everyday, ordinary mind.

Suzuki Roshi endlessly pointed to the ordinary in his embracing of "Beginner's Mind," while his contemporary, the Korean Zen master Sueng Sahn preached "Don't Know Mind."

New York, like anywhere else, is ordinary. It is luminous.

So I was riding on an intercity bus yesterday and the AWESOME '80's song from Duran Duran called "Ordinary World" came on the radio and it struck me that they were singing a love song to Zen. Here's the chorus:

But I won't cry for yesterday, there's an ordinary world,
Somehow I have to find.
And as I try to make my way to the ordinary world,
I will learn to survive.